By Islamuddin Sajid
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AA) - Pakistani police Saturday night launched a crackdown on the country's major opposition party and arrested dozens of its workers in the northeastern Punjab province.
The move came after Maryam Nawaz, the daughter of former Premier Nawaz Sharif, released a video allegedly showing that a judge had been pressured to convict her father on corruption charges last year.
"Police raided houses of our local leadership last night and arrested dozens of local leaders and other workers " Marriyum Aurangzeb, spokesperson of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), said in a statement.
The district administration also refused the party a permit to hold a rally on Sunday in Mandi Bahauddin, she added
Maryam Nawaz, a popular party leader, vowed to defy the ban and hold the rally.
"I will go to Mandi Bahauddin and hold the rally, nobody can stop me,” she said on Saturday.
Punjab is Pakistan’s most populous province, with about half its population of over 200 million people, and the stronghold of the former premier’s party.
-Family legal challenges
Sharif is currently serving seven years in jail from a sentence handed down last December.
In May 2018, Sharif, 68, was also sentenced to 10 years in jail for corruption, but a court suspended the conviction in September.
His daughter and political heir Maryam and son-in-law Mohammad Safdar were also sentenced to jail time over the same case. The two are on bail.
In July 2017, Sharif was disqualified from office by the Supreme Court over the Panama Papers scandal, which also led to the filing of three corruption cases. Not long after, the top court also barred him from holding his party's leadership.
Sharif served as the premier from 1990 to 1992, 1997 to 1999, and 2013 to 2017, unable to complete even a single five-year term. His two previous governments were dismissed over corruption charges and through bloodless military coups in 1992 and 1999, respectively.
Shehbaz Sharif, his younger brother and three-time chief minister of Punjab, and his son Hamza Shehbaz, opposition leader in the Punjab Assembly, are also facing inquiries in connection with multiple corruption cases.