LAHORE: Former president and PPP co-chairperson Asif Ali Zardari has warned ousted prime minister Nawaz Sharif against “confronting institutions”, saying it may have dire consequences.

“Nawaz Sharif is playing a dangerous game. He must know that the game of confrontation with institutions will have dangerous fallout,” he said while talking to the PPP ticket-holders for Punjab Assembly from Lahore in 2013 general elections here on Tuesday.

Mr Zardari, who is in the city since Friday to review the party’s Punjab chapter’s organisational matters and wooing back disgruntled leaders and workers, is set to visit ex-governor and PML-N’s dissident leader from Dera Ghazi Khan, Sardar Zulfikar Khosa, late on Tuesday evening.

According to sources, Mr Khosa is likely to join the PPP in a major breakthrough for the party in south Punjab politics.

Mr Zardari told the audience at the Bilawal House here that the PPP would outshine its rivals in the near future as Punjab, especially Lahore, was slipping out of the Sharifs’ hands.

Those who were in attendance included ex-prime minister Rajaz Pervaiz Ashraf, Chaudhry Manzoor, Aslam Gill, and Azizur Rehman Chan.

He said the PML-N government was undertaking development projects in the provincial metropolis to save its political interests.

He claimed that the PPP would perform better in Punjab, Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in 2018 polls and exhorted the workers to begin preparing themselves for the electoral contest at the earliest.

He, however, said that major decisions would have to be taken pragmatically as the country was passing through the most difficult time of its history.

He said the situation of the national economy was at its worst and had declined further from where the PPP government had left in 2013.

The former ticket-holders suggested forming a committee to select the most suitable candidates for the next polls.

Mr Zardari said he was aware of the difficulties being faced by the party’s Lahore leadership and that he would devise a policy to resolve the same.

Published in Dawn, October 18th, 2017