LAHORE: Just hours after the Islamabad High Court barred the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) from locking down the federal capital on Nov 2, Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif on Thursday urged the trading community to motivate the masses against what he said the nefarious protest aimed at derailing the country from the path to progress.

“If one is ready to honour the Pak-China friendship, to continue the journey of progress and to safeguard the future of the coming generations then each one is duty bound to stand up and foil the unholy plan,” he told a seminar organized by the Lahore Chamber of Commerce and Industry (LCCI) and attended by representatives of almost all traders’ bodies.

It was the chief minister’s second public talk on the PTI protest in the last two days. Earlier, he had been issuing statements almost on a daily basis since the protest plan was announced.

The trading community, long considered a constituency of the Sharifs, unanimously condemned the PTI’s lockdown plan, terming it against interests of the business and general public, and pledged to stay away from it.

One of the participants told Dawn that a group of influential businessmen has sprung into action to strike a patch-up between the PML-N and PTI on some ‘give and take basis’ to help avert likely damage to businesses in case the political rivalry between the two ‘runs out of control’.

According to him, the ‘go-between’ are carrying an offer comprising a piece of legislation that may satisfy the opposition on the Panama Leaks investigation the consensus on which may be developed through parliament or during proceedings of the Panama case in the Supreme Court.

A PML-N official claimed that the ambassador of a friendly country was also approaching the PTI leadership to urge them not to go “too far” in the protest.

Shahbaz told the seminar that during the 2014 Islamabad sit-in the Chinese ambassador had requested the PTI leadership to suspend their protest for a few days to facilitate President Xi Jinping’s visit, but his request was not honored.

He lamented that Imran did not trust even the apex court, which had taken up the Panama case.

Alleging that the protest was meant to derail the country from the road to progress by damaging the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) project, he warned that all such conspiracies would be dealt with an iron hand.

LCCI President Abdul Basit said the country could not afford the politics of agitation at a time when it was facing hard challenges. All-Pakistan Textile Mills Association Chairman Amir Fayyaz called for peace and harmony for the sake of economic development.

Anjuman Tajiran leaders Naeem Mir and Khalid Pervez termed protests and sit-ins an economic murder of the business community and millions of workers.

The businessmen also passed a resolution which stated that traders would vigorously supplement the government efforts for economic uplift of the country, extend cooperation to the government for peace, strongly condemn the politics of vested interest and would not tolerate any attempt to hit the trade, industry and investment.

Published in Dawn, October 28th, 2016