LAHORE: The Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) would never tolerate injustice with students or teachers and the Punjab government would have to review its policies in this regard, PPP Secretary General Senator Jahangir Badar said on Friday while protesting against police torture of students and teachers outside the Punjab Assembly.
He made these remarks in a press conference at the Lahore Press Club. Badar said that using force could never achieve positive results and baton-charging innocent students and teachers made no sense adding that the Punjab government should not create such circumstances that force teachers to stage demonstrations.
The PPP secretary general said that if required, the PPP might think about nationalising all educational institutions in the country’s best interest but no one would be allowed to mint money by exploiting students and teachers by privatising educational institutions.
The former federal minister warned the nation that the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N)-led Punjab government was pushing the country towards dictatorship. He said that the Punjab CM on behest of the capitalist and feudal groups attacked the educational rights of the poor and working classes and started privatising educational institutions against the commitments he had made with Benazir Bhutto during negotiations on political reconciliation.
Badar disclosed that Shahbaz had made some commitments with Benazir in his presence on empowerment of the lower classes before returning to Pakistan but now he had taken a u-turn on the issue. He said that PML-N and Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) leaders including Javed Hashmi, Ahsan Iqbal, Khawaja Saad Rafique and Liaqat Baloch had participated in student politics and urged them to gather on a common platform for showing solidarity with teachers and students against privatisation of educational institutions. The PPP senator expressing solidarity with teachers and students, who were tortured by police on the International Human Rights Day’s eve, urged lawyers and other people struggling for human rights in the country to come forward and support the cause of teachers and students. He claimed that only poor students won gold medals in examinations and they should not be deprived from their basic rights.
Badar demanded the Punjab government to direct private-sector educational institutions to reduce their fees and all institutions failing to do so be nationalised with an immediate effect, as fees of these institutions was not in the common man’s reach due to inflation in Punjab. Responding to a question about Prime Minister Syed Yousaf Raza Gilani’s statement that Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s nationalisation policy was outdated, the PPP leader said that Gilani was the PM of all allied political parties owing to which he had given a diplomatic statement on privatisation of educational institutions.
He said that the PPP had not changed its policy on nationalisation of educational institutions for the poor people’s benefit. Badar said that the PPP always made the best decisions in every regime keeping in mind the present scenario and circumstances so it would not be justified saying that wrong decisions were made in past.
Expressing some regrets on Shahbaz’s behaviour, he said that the Punjab CM had forgotten democracy’s way and started following dictatorial standards by using tyrannical methods against people who tried to get their constitutional and basic rights. Badar said that difference of opinion was democracy’s beauty and the PPP would try to convince the PML-N in a democratic way.
