LAHORE: The Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) has said it will evolve a joint strategy with the Pakistan Peoples Party and the Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam (Fazl) to launch protest against unprecedented price hike and unemployment in the country.

“The PML-N will take [other] opposition parties on board in Rehbar Committee [meetings] and a multi-party conference on price hike and joblessness and they will evolve a joint strategy to take to the streets,” PML-N Punjab president Rana Sanaullah told a press conference here on Sunday.

He said the PML-N would lead this protest and its president Shahbaz Sharif would play his role in this respect.

Mr Sanaullah said the unprecedented price hike showed that the incumbent government was corrupt. He said (Prime Minister) Imran Khan had admitted that his government had failed to control the prices of sugar and wheat flour. “We dare him to name the people behind this crisis and tell whether they will be given any punishment,” he added.

The PML-N leader said Rs100 ­billion to Rs150bn had been earned from the sugar and flour crises. Since Mr Khan had given clean chit to Jahangir Tareen and Khusro Bakhtiar, who would dare conduct a probe into their alleged role in it, he said, adding that earlier those involved in dollar’s artificial shortage had been left off the hook.

Rana Sana believes price hike shows govt is corrupt

The former Punjab law minister said the PTI government had increased gas tariff by 300 per cent and withdrawn subsidies on agriculture sector and public hospitals, making the life of the common man miserable.

Mr Sanaullah, who has been on bail in a narcotics case, challenged the PTI government to prove that the PML-N leadership had indulged in corruption otherwise stop levelling baseless allegations against it.

He advised PTI leader Firdous Ashiq Awan to use “decent language” about the political opponents, especially the Sharif brothers.

The outspoken PML-N leader also asked PTI leaders to stop doing politics over the health of former premier Nawaz Sharif.

“Earlier, politics was done on the health of Begum Kulsoom Nawaz. Now, the government is stopping Maryam Nawaz from going abroad to look after her ailing father. Those who never care about relations have no idea that every daughter or mother wishes to be with her ailing loved one,” he said and asked that since the sentence awarded to Maryam Nawaz had been suspended why she was not being allowed to be with her father during his treatment in London.

Mr Sanaullah said the country would eventually head towards mid-term polls as Imran Khan was the person who respected no one. He said the PTI government could not launch a single project of its own in 18 months and instead was “re-launching PML-N projects”.

He said the government had changed the name of the Pakistan Health Card launched by the previous PML-N ­government and similarly it was boasting about Shahbaz Sharif’s “Safe City” project.

“Imran Khan asks Usman Buzdar why he does not publicise his government’s projects ... How can he do so as he knows that all such projects were launched by the PML-N government,” Mr Sanaullah said and condemned what he called the NAB-PTI collusion for raiding Shahbaz Sharif’s business offices in Lahore.

Published in Dawn, February 17th, 2020