LAHORE: The ruling PML-N heaped criticism on Pakistan Awami Tehreek (PAT) chief Dr Tahirul Qadri on Sunday and termed the Tehreek’s rally a “flopped drama” of people who don’t want to see democracy flourish in the country.

Federal Minister for Information and Broadcasting Pervaiz Rashid said Dr Qadri was a “merchant of lies who is attempting to hoodwink the masses”.

He regretted that the “container Baba” — a reference to the PAT chief who remained in the cosy confines of his container during a sit-in in Islamabad in January this year while his supporters suffered the biting cold outside for nearly 72 hours — kept quiet when the country was hit by floods and earthquakes but now he was trying to become a champion of people’s cause.

He said the “actor” was waiting for the emergence of a dictatorship on the national horizon. But, he added, that would never happen.

Punjab Law Minister Rana Sanaullah Khan claimed that like the failure of a protest rally by Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf, the “drama” of Dr Qadri had also flopped.

He said that people who could not win a councillor’s seat were trying to insult the people’s mandate by staging such demonstrations. He accused Dr Qadri of exploiting religious sentiments of his followers by asking them to come out on roads in the extremely cold weather.

If Dr Qadri wanted to reform the system, he should have participated in the elections, he added.

Referring to the PAT chief’s claim about the number of participants in Sunday’s rally, the minister said it was impossible to guess through the video link that hundreds of thousands of people were present at the gathering.

He claimed that most of the participants were either the people who worked for Dr Qadri’s Minhajul Quran educational institutions or members of their families.

However, he said, the number of people in the PAT rally was more than those in the “tsunami rally” of Imran Khan on Dec 22 and added that it should be a matter of concern for the PTI chairman that his popularity graph was coming down.