KARACHI: Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf chairman Imran Khan lashed out at the ruling party lawmakers for rejecting a Nawaz Sharif-specific opposition bill, saying “their only purpose in parliament is to protect the Sharif mafia’s corruption”.

Mr Khan, who himself chose to stay away from Tuesday’s National Assem­bly session in which all opposition parties voted in favour of a Pakistan Peoples Party bill seeking to restore the bar on a disqualified person from holding party office, took to Twitter in the evening and termed the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz success a “terrible and demoralising message” to the nation.

“Today all PMLN members of the NA should hang their heads in shame for making a farce out of our democracy,” reads one of his tweets. “They opposed an amendment to the election law, simply to allow NS to remain as head of PMLN despite being disqualified from membership of Parlia­ment under the Constitu­tion.”

Criticising the PML-N lawmakers for protecting “the Sharif mafia’s corruption”, he tweeted: “In a democracy moral authority is a core principle. Today that was negated by PMLN which sought to place their corrupt ldr [leader] above all laws.”

In another tweet, the PTI chief said: “What a terrible and demoralising message has gone out to the nation, esp [especially] the youth: that there is nothing wrong with being corrupt.”

Published in Dawn, November 22nd, 2017