Maryam advises youth against 'blind following'

Punjab Chief Minister Maryam Nawaz on Wednesday lashed out at the disruptive and violence-based politics of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) as she urged the young students and the parents to make a habit of fact check before believing something.

Addressing a scholarship award ceremony at the University of Sargodha, the chief minister said that politics is a service to the people. She warned that inciting people or going against the state for someone's lust for power was no politics.

Though she did not mention the PTI or its founder in her speech but she did mention, Imran's nephew Hasaan Niazi, who was convicted by the military court last week for his role in attack on the Jinnah House in Lahore on May 9, 2023.

How hard it must be for Hasaan Niazi's father and mother!", she said. "The one who displayed the military uniform by hanging it on a pole is imprisoned for 10 years, when he will be released, the world will have changed," she added.

Those in uniform sacrifice their lives for the people and the country; they do not tolerate any insult. There was no need to burn Jinnah House for political differences. Why would you [PTI] kill people if you're not in the government. Why is that the army is good if it is with you, and it is bad when it is not?"

She exhorted everyone not to become a tool in someone's greed for power. "Keep your children safe at home and do not incite other people's children. Don't blindly follow everything, check everything first," she said, adding: "The children who were misled by others are in jail now."

In her speech, Maryam Nawaz also spoke about her own ordeal, while she was put in jail along with her father Nawaz Sharif, during the tenure of the PTI government. However, despite all the difficulties, she said, she did not thought of harming the country.

She mentioned that the then prime minister, Imran Khan, he said that he would remove the air-conditioners, from the jail cell of Nawaz. "It is very easy to remove the fan or the AC, or stop the food. But this is not us," the chief minister stated.

"I received the news of my mother's passing in Adiala Jail. Despite the shock, I did not tell anyone to launch attack r resort to arson. I have no political agenda when it comes to decision making for the benefit of the people," added.