LAHORE: The Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) holds the ‘inefficient’ Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) government responsible for the lawyers’ hooliganism at the Punjab Institute of Cardiology here on Wednesday and demands resignation of the chief minister and the health minister.

Condemning the incident in which four patients lost their lives, Punjab PPP information secretary Syed Hassan Murtaza said the ‘inefficient’ government was to be blamed for the tragedy as it didn’t act in time on the dispute brewing between a group of lawyers and some doctors for the last many days.

The ‘non-serious’ government turned the dispute into a gory incident, he said, regretting that the Wasim Akram Plus (an allusion to Chief Minister Usman Buzdar) was using all his energies and time for appeasing Prime Minister Imran Khan Niazi. Whereas Mr Niazi, he said, was focusing his attention on appeasing his selectors.

The PPP leader demanded registration of murder cases against the government for the death of patients in the PIC.

Shahbaz calls for probe into lawyers’ hooliganism

He demanded that both the chief minister and the health minister must tender their resignations on this incident.

Meanwhile, the PPP celebrated release on bail of the party’s co-chairperson Asif Ali Zardari.

A ceremony was held at the provincial secretariat of the party here in which Munawwar Anjum, Chaudhry Aslam Gill, Naveed Chaudhry, Osman Malik, Azizur Rehman Chan and others participated.

SHAHBAZ SHARIF: PML-N President Shahbaz Sharif has condemned “the chaos created in Lahore” and called for a high-level investigation into the incident.

In a statement issued here on Wednesday, Shahbaz Sharif, opposition leader in the National Assembly, said those responsible for the hooliganism must not at any cost be spared as they caused the country international embarrassment.

He said the loss of precious lives due to this horrific incident was sorrowful beyond words and no amount of repentance, compensation or apology could heal this wound. He called for stern punishment according to law for those responsible.

Mr Shahbaz said the major loser in today’s anarchy was the Pakistani society, its values and its image.

“Such aggressive and escalated clash of two highly educated fraternities of the society marks the absolute failure of the government. The chain of events clearly shows that not only did the government fail to understand the gravity of the situation and see it coming, it also failed to prevent it by timely intervention”, he said.

Expressing utter disappointment and grief, he said no society can progress when those who are sworn to protect law take law into their own hands while those under oath to heal inflict wounds and death.

Published in Dawn, December 12th, 2019