LAHORE: The Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz has criticised the government for declaring a local holiday on Saturday (today) in Hafizabad to facilitate the masses to attend a public meeting Prime Minister Imran Khan is scheduled to address.

PML-N general secretary Ahsan Iqbal said the Punjab government was going the extra mile to help the prime minister start his so-called mass contact campaign to counter the pressure built up by a series of public meetings the opposition had held across the country. The prime minister is scheduled to address a public meeting at Hafizabad on Saturday and the deputy commissioner of the district has notified a local holiday there on the occasion.

The deputy commissioner claimed that the step had been taken to avert possibility of a traffic congestion which was likely to take place as the arrival time of the prime minister in the area was coinciding with the closing time of educational institutions.

Mr Iqbal asked if public meetings of the PTI government was ‘coronavirus free’ as it was violating its own Covid-19 Standard Operating Procedures while asking opposition parties to avoid holding public meetings in view of the coronavirus pandemic.

In reply to a question about PPP chairman Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari’s comments in an interview with a foreign media outlet in which he stated that he was shocked when he heard PML-N supremo Nawaz Sharif in Gujranwala rally of the opposition alliance Pakistan Democratic Movement naming military top brass as behind his ouster from power, Mr Iqbal said that one should go through the whole interview as the PPP leader was expressing his unanimity of views with that of the PDM.

Former Sindh governor and Nawaz’s spokesperson Mohammad Zubair said that his party respected Mr Bilawal as he was a part of the opposition alliance.

In a statement issued shortly after Mr Bilawal’s interview was published, he said: “This is Bilawal’s personal opinion. Nawaz has served as the prime minister and there was a PML-N government even after his (Nawaz’s) ouster. What he (Nawaz) said at the Gujranwala rally comes from the experience of the PML-N government.”

Insisting that what Nawaz Sharif said was based on facts, he said: “This is obvious that it did not happen with the PPP. We think it is important to inform the people about what happened to ensure civilian supremacy so that what happened in the past is not repeated in future.”

Published in Dawn, November 7th, 2020