ISLAMABAD, LAHORE: PML-N President and Opposition leader in National Assembly Shehbaz Sharif has condemned the baton charge and inhuman treatment meted out to the members of the opposition in Balochistan Assembly on the eve of budget presentation Friday terming it the height of fascism by the government.
In a statement released in Lahore on Saturday, Shehbaz harshly deplored the cold-hearted treatment the members of Balochistan Assembly had to bear during their protest held to disrupt the budget session on Friday. He said to baton charge members of the provincial assembly and stop them from attending the assembly session was the height of despotism.
He regretted that using torture and force, were undemocratic, non-parliamentarian and unpolitical tools employed by the despots. He said it was unfortunate that the present government considered a democratic protest, having a difference of opinion and criticism personal enmity.
Shehbaz lamented that the government first adopted this undemocratic attitude in the National Assembly, now it was being repeated in the Balochistan Assembly. This anarchy is not good in Balochistan Assembly, he added.
He said that disgracing the honour of members of Balochistan Assembly was condemnable. He demanded to remove the deprivations of the opposition members and accept their lawful demands. He asked the government to pay heed to their demands as preventing them from attending the assembly was no cure to the problem. He demanded of both sides to show tolerance and maturity.
Senior PML-N leader Rana Sanaullah said on Saturday that the PTI government did nothing during the past three years except taking revenge from its political opponents.
Talking to the media outside anti-narcotics court in Lahore, he said that the government’s much-trumpeted slogan of accountability had also been exposed.
Sanaullah claimed that the late judge, Arshad Malik, had gone to Sharifs’ residence at Jati Umra to apologize to former prime minister and PML-N supremo Nawaz Sharif that he had to give verdict against him in Al-Azizia Steel Mills case under ‘pressure’.
PML-N leader accused the government of giving a ‘clean chit’ to estranged PTI leader Jahangir Khan Tareen (JKT) in corruption references through Federal Investigation Agency (FIA). “Imran Khan Niazi is always seen pledging that he will not give ‘NRO’ to anybody. But for the sake of getting votes from the JKT group for getting the budget passed from the parliament, he gave him NRO,” he alleged.
He was of the view that just like corruption cases were filed against Nawaz Sharif in order to take ‘revenge’ from him, similarly JKT was implicated in cases to victimize him.
He opined that efforts to change the course of politics in the country began in 2014 when PTI, led by Imran Khan, held a sit-in in Islamabad for four months.
He further said that the law minister had rejected the names of candidates Chief Justice of the Lahore High Court (LHC) had sent to him for the appointment of judges because he wanted his blue-eyed boys in the LHC. “The law minister judges of the likes of the late Arshad Malik in the courts,” Sanaullah said.
PML-N leader said that when the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) could not prove corruption of a single penny against PML-N President Shehbaz Sharif, the government had now instructed the FIA to go after him. “FIA director in Lahore is at such stage of his life that it is better he does not become part of a plot hatched against Shehbaz,” he said, and hoped that he would not become part of any such conspiracy. INP
