THE crowd turnover along the route of Nawaz Sharif’s motorcade from Islamabad to Lahore has been indeed large. It must, however, be taken into account that the belt on which he has travelled is inhabited by a large Kashmiri population.

The importance of caste and origin largely determine the popularity of a national leader. The popularity of Mr Sharif must be seen in this background.

Having demonstrated his popularity in the region to which he belongs, being a national leader and aspiring for the top political office of the country, in the next phase he should travel by road from Lahore to Multan, then Multan to Hyderabad and, lastly, from there to Karachi.

It seems crowds turning up wouldn’t match the size of his home crowd. Already the feeling is that the PML-N administration has been paying much less attention to South Punjab, Sindh and Karachi.

The impression in some circles that Mr Sharif represents only Punjab and ignores the rest of the country would be dispelled or confirmed in this way. Mr Sharif’s strong point should be that he represents the national opinion and not of the region to which he belongs and his party is dominant.

His reputation for a reasonably good administration confined to the northern part of the country needs to be dispelled.

Kunwar Idris

Karachi

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ACCORDING to a report in Dawn (Aug 14), the investigation into the death of a 12-year-old boy, who was hit by a protocol vehicle in the former PM’s convoy at Lalamusa, has been completed. The vehicle was a BMW jeep with a fake number-plate.

A senior police officer commented that it was a normal practice to use fake number-plates on VVIP protocol vehicles for security reasons.

The vehicle could not be identified nor was the driver arrested, yet the investigation has been closed.

First, what was the VVIP protocol vehicle doing in the convoy of a common citizen? Secondly, why can’t the vehicle and the driver be identified? The organisers or the leader of the convoy should be questioned.

This incident needs to be probed further and the culprits brought to justice.

Samina Asif

Karachi

Published in Dawn, August 19th, 2017