LAHORE: Refusing to accept his legal team’s suggestion to challenge the Supreme Court’s decision to take up the Panamagate petitions, the prime minister preferred to contest them, says Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif.

“The prime minister did not agree to the suggestion of his legal team that the government should challenge the maintainability of the Panama case petitions. Instead he preferred to welcome the court’s decision to take up the matter and presented himself for accountability. After this PTI is left with no justification for protest,” the chief minister said at the launch of the Dealer Vehicle Registration System at his Model Town office here on Saturday.

Tension seems running high in the PML-N camp in the wake of the PTI protest plan as Shahbaz Sharif has joined the group of the party’s hawks who have been targeting Imran Khan for not doing away with the ‘politics of agitation’. PML-N’s Pervaiz Rashid, Khwaja Asif, Danayal Aziz, Talal Chaudhry, Muhammad Zubair, Rana Sanaullah and Abid Sher Ali never spare the PTI leadership for its utterances against its top leader or its protest politics. Shahbaz Sharif usually does not aggressively take on the PTI leadership. However, Shahbaz has started flexing his muscles and lambasting Imran Khan and PTI in public since it announced the Islamabad shutdown.

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Lauding his elder brother’s gesture to present himself before the SC in Panama case, Shahbaz said: “The prime minister has said he will appear in the (Panama) case and fight it out. Perhaps this is the only example in the history of Pakistan that a premier completely surrendered himself to court (for accountability).”

Shahbaz also sees some ‘hidden agenda’ in PTI’s protest move.

In the face of allegations that the establishment is behind the PTI’s Islamabad protest, Shahbaz fret about Imran’s refusal to review his protest plan despite the fact that the SC has taken up the Panama case.

“I fail to understand why the PTI sticks to its sit-in plan despite the fact that SC has taken up the Panama case. The PTI should wait for the SC decision and shun its protest. If it does not do so it means PTI neither accepts the parliament, judicial commission nor the apex court and has some scheme behind its Islamabad lockdown,” the chief minister said and declared PTI ‘anti-CPEC’. He enumerated instances of the party’s ‘anti-CPEC’ stance. Shahbaz said the PTI created hurdles in formation of ToRs and a judicial commission to probe the Panama case. “I ask the PTI to accept the SC as there is no highest forum in the country. If we do not accept the apex court then everything will be started settling on roads,” he said.

Published in Dawn, October 23rd, 2016