LAHORE: The Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) has advised the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) to replace Hamza Shahbaz as the opposition leader.

“The PML-N should replace Hamza as opposition leader with someone else as he is engaged in his personal and family cases and may not give proper time for overseeing parliamentary affairs,” PPP parliamentary leader in Punjab Assembly Hassan Murtaza said here on Thursday.

He argued in a statement that because of a lack of coordination between Hamza and other parties, the opposition was failing to devise a strategy and give a tough time to the government.

“There should be an opposition leader who could spare time for parliamentary affairs and do effective opposition against the government’s policies.”

He said if the opposition didn’t act in an effective way now to check what he said anti-masses policies of the PTI-led government, the people would not forgive them. He said the people of Punjab were looking towards the opposition parties which must not disappoint them.

Hamza’s father Shahbaz Sharif is opposition leader in the National Assembly. He has stepped down as parliamentary leader and as Public Accounts Committee chairman recently apparently due to his health reasons. He is at present in London undergoing medical tests.

In a reference to boycott of elections of the standing committees chairmen by the PML-N, Mr Murtaza complained that the PPP and other opposition parties were not being taken into confidence on the decision and said they were not (morally) bound to follow the policy of the N League and would take part in the elections for the standing committees’ chairmanship.

Meanwhile, PPP Punjab chapter president Qamar Zaman Kaira said that because of incompetence of the rulers the value of rupee has registered a record fall against the US dollar.

In a statement, he said dollar had vanished from the open market as its value against rupee had gone up to Rs147 and the government’s warning of action against hoarders of the greenback had proved futile.

Mr Kaira said Prime Minister Imran Khan could not devise any economic policy and he didn’t know anything about governance. He said the PTI chief sought resignation of the party’s economic team over its failure and now he had imposed the IMF team on the country to make matters worse.

The PPP leader said the Tax Amnesty Scheme would not achieve the desired results and investors had been scared away by the uncertainty. He feared a steep rise in inflation as well as poverty graph.

Published in Dawn, May 17th, 2019