LAHORE: Encouraged by the response people gave on Nawaz Sharif’s return to prison on Tuesday, the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz has decided to gradually build its campaign against the government instead of going into dormancy like in the post-election days.

“What you witnessed yesterday (Tuesday) was a warm-up tie while the real game would start post-Eid and by the month of August a full-fledged drive would be launched,” said a senior party official privy to the formation of the policy.

The official told Dawn that the party would focus on media during the month of Ramazan and build momentum for gradually initiating an anti-government campaign after Eid.

The official said that it was decided to schedule visits of newly-appointed vice-president Maryam Nawaz to press clubs, bar associations and other forums not accessed by her so far.

Re-organisation of the party down to district and town level would also be taken on war footing to mobilise the cadre, he added.

He said earlier it had been decided to bifurcate the party into South and Central Punjab chapters in line with likely administrative division of the province but the decision was reversed seeing that the PTI government itself was going slow on the issue.

For a balanced representation of the two regions, it was decided to pick provincial president from Central Punjab and general secretary from the southern belt, he added.

PML-N supremo Nawaz Sharif had chaired a meeting of the party bigwigs at his Raiwind residence hours before surrendering himself to Kot Lakhpat Jail administration in which former prime minister and senior vice-president Shahid Khaqan Abbasi was assigned the task of directly establishing links with the Pakistan People’s Party even without taking along JUI-F chief Maulana Fazlur Rehman, a party leader said.

He said the purpose of the contacts was for taking the PPP leadership on board regarding the changes the PML-N recently introduced in the parliament as well as framing a joint future strategy against the PTI government.

Meanwhile, Punjab chapter information secretary Azma Zahid Bukhari says a meeting of the provincial body is being convened next week to set a time frame and line of action for re-organisation at divisional and district level as well as organising and mobilising the allied wings.

Published in Dawn, May 9th, 2019