Internal rifts among the divisional leadership of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), and not the memo controversy, forced the party’s central leadership to cancel its rally in Gujranwala scheduled for Friday (today), sources told Pakistan Today on Thursday.
PML-N sources told Pakistan Today that the party’s central leadership was unhappy with the divisional leadership for not contacting the people even in the final days before the rally — something which forced the top leadership to reconsider its plan of holding the public gathering. The sources said that millions of rupees were spent on the rally’s advertisement campaign and several meetings had been organised to plan the arrangements, however a lack of collaboration between the central and local leaderships resulted in the cancellation of the rally.
The PML-N’s central leadership, including Hamza Shahbaz and Punjab Assembly Deputy Speaker Rana Mashhood, made recurrent visits to Gujranwala to check the arrangements, but rifts within the local leaders became an obstacle.
Sources further revealed that the PML-N collected Rs 500,000 from each of its national and provincial legislator from Gujranwala Division for the rally. However, all local party leaders tried take a lead over others by spending more on advertising their posters, instead of gathering people and finalising the arrangements. Malik Shakeel, a trader and activist of the PML-N, said the party’s supporters were looking forward to welcoming Nawaz Sharif but the cancellation of the rally had disappointed them.
A party statement issued on Wednesday said the new date for the public gathering in Gujranwala would be announced after Muharram. According to the statement, the memo issue was of sensitive nature and hence, it could not be left on just rallies and processions.
Punjab government spokesman Senator Pervaiz Rasheed had earlier told Pakistan Today that the PML-N had filed a petition over the issue in the Supreme Court and the party could not hold gatherings during the hearing of such an important case.
