ISLAMABAD, April 10: The opposition parties announced on Thursday that they would continue their boycott of the National and four provincial assemblies unless the government took concrete steps to bring to justice the elements behind violence against their leaders in Karachi and Lahore.

Addressing a press conference outside the parliament house, Leader of Opposition Chaudhry Parvaiz Elahi and MQM’s parliamentary leader Dr Farooq Sattar accused the government of delaying an inquiry into the incidents which could cast negative effect on newly-installed democratic governments in the centre and provinces.

The opposition leaders criticised the acts of violence against MQM lawyers in Karachi, manhandling of former Sindh chief minister Dr Arbab Ghulam Rahim in the Sindh assembly and former federal minister Dr Sher Afgan Niazi in Lahore.

Chaudhry Parvaiz Elahi alleged that even before the induction of the PML-N-led government in Punjab, police raids were being carried out on PML-Q offices in the province.

Dr Farooq Sattar termed incidents of violence in Karachi a conspiracy to sabotage the process of transition to full democracy and to let the country slide into anarchy.

He said that MQM lawyers were violently attached when they were returning after holding a peaceful rally, thereby strengthened an impression that the politics of revenge was being revived and lawyers’ community was being used for the purpose.

He said that by boycotting the assemblies the opposition wanted to make the government realise the sensitivity of the situation and to take serious steps to rectify the changing perceptions about democracy.

Dr Sher Afgan Niazi said the ongoing violence in politics was dragging the country back towards dictatorship. He said the new coalition had not reciprocated to the opposition’s gesture of cooperation.