Pakistan didn't treat Bangalees well

The Bangalee people had a central role in the effort to create Pakistan, but Pakistan did not treat them well and separated them from Pakistan, former Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif said yesterday, Dawn reports.

The thrice-ousted prime minister said, "The Justice Hamoodur Rehman Commission had published a very truthful and clear report on the creation of Bangladesh after a detailed analysis, but we did not even read it.

"Had we acted on it, today's Pakistan would have been different and the kinds of games that are being played would not have been played."

Claiming that he had been "persecuted" over the years and "pushed towards revolt", Sharif drew parallels between what he considers to be his own “cornering” by the state and the events that led to the separation of Bangladesh from Pakistan.

"[Former Bangladesh prime minister] Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was not a rebel, but was made into one," Sharif remarked, referring to the consequences that followed the state's refusal to allow a popularly elected leader to hold the prime minister's office.

This is not the first time Sharif has invoked 1971 ever since he was unceremoniously ousted from power by the Supreme Court's Panamagate decision.

But "I want to forget all these wounds," he remarked. "I don't want to take them to a point where my emotions get out of my control."

"What has been done to me, and to all the elected prime ministers in this country's history, is not correct," he continued. "What kind of return for service to the nation is this?"

Demanding an end to the usurpation of democratically-elected governments, he asked that those involved in behind-the-scenes manipulation of the political order "repent for their sins and ask for forgiveness from the nation."

"No court that can try a dictator has ever come into existence in Pakistan," Sharif, himself sent packing by the Supreme Court, complained to a group of lawyers gathered at Punjab House, Islamabad.