‘After Nawaz, religio-political alliance eyes PML-N minus Shahbaz Sharif’
LAHORE: The religious and political parties in the opposition are all set to form an alliance against the ruling party to get the resignation of Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif after the Justice Baqir Najfi report on the Model Town killings was made public last week.
Pakistan Awami Tehreek (PAT) chief Tahir ul Qadri held Punjab Law Minister Rana Sanaullah and Shahbaz Sharif responsible for the 2014 incident in which 14 workers were killed and about 80 were injured.
After the report, former president and PPP co-chairman Asif Ali Zardari, Mustafa Kamal of the Pak Sarzameen Party (PSP), as well as Shah Mehmood Qureshi and Jehangir Khan Tareen of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) visited the PAT headquarters, and endorsed Qadri’s demand for the resignations of Shahbaz Sharif and Rana Sanaullah.
They also supported Qadri’s demand for the constitution of a joint investigation team (JIT) along the lines of the one formed to probe into the Panama Papers case.
According to political pundits, politicians from the opposition parties are using the Model Town inquiry report as a tool to put pressure on Shehbaz Sharif so that he resigns, in the garb of sympathy for the Model Town victims. Qadri had also announced to launch a legal battle and sit-in protest against the chief minister to seek justice.
“They are doing so because Shahbaz Sharif is a major hurdle in the way of early elections before Senate polls that are due in March and it is Shehbaz who saved the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) from a major disaster in the aftermath of former prime minister Nawaz Sharif’s disqualification.
However, both the PPP and PTI rejected the notion. PPP Information Secretary Chaudhry Manzoor said that a meeting between Asif Ali Zardari and Tahir ul Qadri had nothing to do with politics.
Manzoor clarified, saying that “the PPP will go all the way to bring perpetrators of the Model Town incident to justice. If Tahirul Qadri decided to hold a sit-in this regard then the PPP will be a part of it.”
PTI leader Ijaz Chaudhry’s view echoed the same stance. He said, “The PTI was not doing politics over dead bodies as it supported the cause of the Model Town victims since the very first day. The Punjab CM should resign as he had promised during a press conference soon after the incident that ‘if an enquiry points fingers at me, I will immediately resign.”
On the other hand, Shehbaz has chosen reply to his political opponents’ call for resignation by boosting his performance in the province.
On Saturday, he paid a surprise visit to the Orange Line Metro Train (OLMT) project and reviewed the progress on civil, mechanical and electrical works. He vowed to complete the project before March after the Supreme Court’s decision to set aside the Lahore High Court’s (LHC) order that had halted work on the $1.65 billion OLMT.
Later in the day, he along with Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi performed the ceremony of the second RLNG-based 1,263-megawatt power plant at Haveli Bahadur Shah near Jhang.
