MUZAFFARABAD: Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) chief Nawaz Sharif on Sunday came down hard on Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), saying those talking about revolution supported a dictator for over a decade.

“Today those who had been defending and supporting a dictator for eleven years are talking about revolution,” he said at a huge public meeting in Muzaffarabad shortly after formally announcing the launch of PML-N in Azad Kashmir (AJK).

The PML will not merely be an addition of a new political party in AJK but a basis for a revolution in the region, he said.

The former prime minister asked why CJ Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry was not allowed to come out of the airport when he flew to Karachi on a peaceful tour and why over 50 people were gunned down on that day.

“Why Karachi saw over a 100 dead bodies when an MPA was killed in the town,” he said, referring to Raza Haider’s murder in August this year.

Mr Sharif said he had also been saddened by the murder of Dr Imran Farooq in London, but asked why Karachi was subjected to bloodshed.

He said after October 12, 1999 coup, these people stood by the dictator. He said when the judiciary was assaulted, innocent children were killed in Lal Masjid and the country was subjected to the worst ever power crises, these people continued to rally behind the dictator.

“What type of revolution is it? These are two contradictory things. Your actions do not match your sayings.”

He asserted that the PML-N was struggling for a social and fiscal revolution where people would enjoy all civic amenities and rights a welfare state owes to its citizens.

Referring to allegations of being a “friendly opposition,” he said, he was no more a friend of the government. “Yes I was friendly when I entered into agreements with Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto and signed an accord in Murree. All that was for the sake of a better future for the people of Pakistan but President Zardari backed out and he is no more my friend,” he said.

He regretted that the mandate of people was trampled at the hands of men in uniform who imposed martial laws, deposed governments and sent some civilian rulers into exile and others behind the bars.

Earlier, Mr Sharif said he was never wanted to establish PML-N in AJK because he believed that the Muslim Conference was a Muslim League in the region. But without naming the MC leadership, he said they kept on getting mandate of a ‘general’ instead of the public.

Recalling the October 2005 earthquake, he said the affected people had shown remarkable resilience but the money donated for their rehabilitation had either been embezzled or spent somewhere else. “This is what makes donors suspicious about us,” he said.

Mr Sharif, who was earlier given a Kashmiri kangri, nostalgically remembered how the traditional earthen firepot used to be an essential part of his home.