LAHORE: Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) lawmaker Murad Raas on Tuesday submitted a resolution in the Punjab Assembly condemning provincial Law Minister Rana Sanaullah Khan’s remarks against party’s female workers.
The resolution called for Sanaullah’s immediate dismissal from the Law Ministry and demanded an apology over his ‘derogatory’ remarks towards female participants of a PTI rally in Lahore on April 29.
On April 30, a day after PTI’s rally at Lahore’s Minar-e-Pakistan, Sanaullah had said, “The women who attended the rally were not from honourable families because their dance moves implied where they had actually come from.”
Sanaullah is not the only Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) leader who has drawn ire in the past few days over his misogynist remarks.
Federal Minister Tallal Chaudhry, at a separate press conference, had said, “We don’t ask whose house you [Imran Khan] stay at when you visit London. It is another matter altogether what you do over there. When it comes to your wife, she remains veiled, but our mothers and sisters are on display?”
A third PML-N leader, Abid Sher Ali, issued derogatory remarks against PTI’s Shireen Mazari while addressing a public gathering in Faisalabad on Sunday night.
Abid Sher Ali said that while Mazari was protesting against Finance Minister Miftah Ismail’s budget speech in the National Assembly, she had said, “Don’t touch me.”
“What is there to touch?” he asked the crowd.
Similarly, the Punjab government distanced itself from Rana Sanaullah and Tallal Chaudhry’s remarks against PTI women workers.
After the comments sparked a backlash against the PML-N leaders, Punjab Government Spokesperson Malik Ahmed Khan condemned the remarks.
“Be it Abid Sher Ali, Rana Sanaullah, Tallal Chaudhry or Imran Khan, I cannot tolerate this as these women are our mothers, sisters and daughters,” Malik said.
“What Rana Sanaullah said was wrong. I condemn that. He should not have said it. What Tallal said was wrong. I condemn that. He should not have said it,” the spokesperson said while speaking to a private news channel.
“Irrespective of their political affiliation, [such derogatory language] should not be used against those mothers and sisters who come forward to take part in the political process,” he said.
PML-N leader and Defence Minister Khurram Dastgir Khan also voiced his distaste with the remarks on Twitter stating, “Disrespectful remarks about women are reprehensible, regardless of who utters them”.