Former PM Nawaz Sharif seeks votes to ‘re-build Pakistan’

Lahore: Former prime minister and Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz supremo Nawaz Sharif on Thursday led his party’s election campaign in the country’s most populous Punjab province, urging the people to vote for him so that he could “re-build Pakistan”.

The general elections are scheduled to be held on February 8. Jailed former premier Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party is already

out of the polls as the Supreme Court deprived it of its election symbol cricket ‘bat’. Now, PTI candidates are contesting the elections independently.

Nawaz led the election campaign of the PML-N on Thursday, five days after the PTI was officially ousted from the political arena.

This is also his first public appearance after three months. In October

last year, Nawaz returned to Pakistan from the UK where he spent four years in self-exile.

Speaking at a public rally in Hafizabad, about 200 km from provincial capital Lahore,

74-year-old Nawaz asked

the people to help him

“rebuild Pakistan”.