ISLAMABAD: Maryam Nawaz, the vice president of the Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz (PMLN) opposition party, arrived in Karachi on Sunday ahead of a second protest rally organized by a recently formed opposition alliance to call for early elections in Pakistan.

A countrywide protest campaign under the Pakistan Democratic Alliance banner-- a nine party opposition alliance-- kicked off in Gujranwala on Friday. Sunday’s rally in Karachi, the capital of Sindh province, will be followed by another one in Quetta city later this month. 

Banners along the roads, painted in the flag colors of Sindh’s ruling Pakistan People’s Party, welcomed Nawaz’s convoy as it left the airport. 

Three-layered security has been set up at the rally, with several roads blocked for safety and a huge crowd gathered at the venue.

Hitting back at Prime Minister Imran Khan’s address at a convention on Saturday, Nawaz told reporters at the airport that Khan’s were the words of a ‘defeated and angry man.’

Khan had said it would now be his ‘utmost effort’ to bring Nawaz Sharif, the father of Maryam Nawaz and a three-time Pakistani prime minister, back to Pakistan from London to face ‘regular’ jail rather than the VIP prisons reserved for high-profile convicts in Pakistan.

“He can take these threats elsewhere,” Nawaz said. “If anybody is under the impression that we were kept in jails [in the past] with any amenities, they’re wrong. We were jailed in regular prisons.”

“And after months in jail, any fear we had of prisons is now gone,” she added. 

Nawaz Sharif was ousted from his second term as PM in a military coup in 2000. He was prime minister for a third term from 2013 to 2017, when he was removed by the Supreme Court amid corruption revelations over his personal wealth. He was subsequently convicted of graft but says the accusations are politically motivated.

On October 25 last year, Sharif was granted bail and got court clearance to leave the country for medical treatment in London, where he is now based. 

In 2019, Sharif’s daughter was also arrested by the anti-corruption bureau while attempting to visit her father at a jail in the city of Lahore. She is currently out on bail in several cases.

PM Khan’s PTI party swept to power in August 2018 after defeating all major opposition parties. The PDM opposition alliance says the party won a rigged election with the help of the military establishment, which Khan’s government and the army deny.