The Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) gave a tit-for-tat response to the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) on Wednesday when Punjab Opposition Leader Raja Riaz said that the party does not accept Shahbaz Sharif as the Punjab chief minister.
He was talking to journalists at the Punjab Assembly (PA) Cafeteria. Some days ago, Shahbaz had said that he did not accept Asif Ali Zardari as the president, which further deteriorated the relations between the PPP and PML-N. Riaz said that Zardari was an elected president and if he refused to accept the president’s status, the PPP would also not accept Shahbaz as CM. The Punjab opposition leader said that the Punjab government had failed to check dengue deaths and in order to cover the negligence of the PML-N government in the province, the Sharif brothers were trying to exploit the issue of load shedding. He advised the PML-N to avoid exploiting the load shedding issue to hide its failures regarding dengue.
The PPP leader said that PML-N President Nawaz Sharif was conspiring against the federal government to avoid his party’s defeat in the upcoming Senate elections. He said that in fact, the PML-N wanted to derail the democratic system but its move would be foiled. Riaz said that the recent “anti-load shedding PML-N sponsored rallies” were politically motivated to divert the people’s attention from dengue. He asked Shahbaz that instead of launching a smear campaign against the federal government, he should step forward with concrete proposals about power generation.
The PPP leader said that the party had submitted a requisition for the PA session to discuss the dengue issue, loss of precious lives and use of substandard sprays and medicines by government officials. Riaz said that the PPP offered its services against dengue but the Punjab government did not bothered in this regard. He regretted that “power hungry” Shahbaz politicised the load shedding issue and provoked his party workers to take to the streets.
The PPP leader said that the federal government, under the leadership of President Zardari, would soon be able to rid the country of load shedding forever.
Separately, holding a press conference at the Lahore Press Club, PPP Punjab President Imtiaz Safdar Warraich grilled the provincial government over its flop efforts to control dengue. PPP Punjab General Secretary Samiullah Khan, PPP Punjab Information Secretary Dr Fakharuddin Chaudhry and Iqbal Sialvi were also present. Warraich said that Shahbaz and his allies were incapable of holding provincial government offices. He said that in reality, the PPP’s policies were being admired by the masses at large and President Zardari was a real threat to PML-N in the next elections due to which the Sharif brothers were trying to target the president. Declaring Shahbaz as the Punjab health minister, Warraich said that by refusing to accept Zardari as president, Shahbaz had actually refused to accept parliament.
