Polls can't be put off, sabotaged: Nawaz

LAHORE: Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) President Mian Nawaz Sharif Saturday said that the people are yearning for a change in the country and expressed confidence that the elections will neither be postponed nor sabotaged.

He was addressing the party workers at a function organized by Khawaja Saad Rafiq’s father Khawaja Rafiq in Lahore.

Nawaz Sharif said that President Zardari should desist from trying to overstep his presidential role and warned that such moves could turn the latter as well as the elections controversial.

"Although the governor and all the district nazims were against us, we managed to play a role for the amendment of the constitution and the system," he said, adding his party gave this country an independent election commission and introduced an amendment under which a caretaker government will be formed within the next three days following the completion of tenure by the assemblies.

He was of the view that if Pakistan wants to be a respectable nation it has no choice but to ensure transition of the governments through elections. The ideology they we are safeguarding with conviction will steer the country out of troubles, he claimed.

The PML-N leader said: "We have preferred jail sentences and exiles to bowing down before dictators."

Going forward, Nawaz Sharif said his repeated turning down of the offers to meet Musharaf led to the passage of NRO and the consequent rejection of his and Shahbaz Sharif's nomination papers to contest elections.