LAHORE: The West Pakistan Minister for Law and Information, Mr Ghulam Nabi Memon, said here today [Feb 7] that the tone and tenor of the speeches and resolutions adopted at the Opposition conference clearly betrayed a state of political hypochondria on the part of the participants.

In a Press statement, Mr Memon said the participants in the conference criticised the Tashkent Declaration and the Government’s method of handling the Kashmir issue. But they had suggested no alternative way of their own by which the liberation of held Kashmir could be hastened.

With such a negative approach to national problems, above all to Kashmir, the Opposition would never have a chance of fulfilling its ambitions, to capture political power in the country, which was nearer to their heart than any other national objective.

Mr Memon said: “As I had advised earlier it would have been to the advantage of everybody if the Opposition had deferred calling its ‘all parties conference’ to a more appropriate time. But now that it has been held what has anybody gained by it?

“It has shown the people that the Opposition was divided into as many as seven parties, that of these seven, when invited to a conference, two had altogether rejected the invitation, one had virtually dropped out after the first day’s sitting and the remaining four had failed to unite among themselves and form one party.”

The Law Minister added: “They had a great story to tell about the fancied loss of civil liberties, the assumed dissolution of democratic rights and the suspected horrors of certain pieces of legislation, but they had omitted equally relevant facts from this survey that all the Opposition leaders in the country were free, that their parties were able to hold their All-Parties Conference, and that they had the freedom, in this very conference, to openly preach with the intent to cause dissatisfaction and frustration.”

Published in Dawn, February 8th, 2016