ISLAMABAD: The Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), which recently parted ways with the opposition’s Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM), has felicitated Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) president Shehbaz Sharif on getting bail from a court while indirectly mentioning the word “deal” in the felicitation message.

“If any PPP leader gets relief from the courts, hue and cry is made and the relief is termed a deal. We hope that the courts will also give the right of bail to Syed Khursheed Ahmed Shah like Shehbaz Sharif,” said PPP’s information secretary Faisal Karim Kundi in a message on Wednesday.

Extending felicitation to Shehbaz Sharif, who is also the opposition leader in the National Assembly, Mr Kundi recalled that former opposition leader Khursheed Shah has been incarcerated since September 18, 2019.

The statement was issued by the PPP hours after Mr Sharif was granted bail by the Lahore High Court in the assets beyond means case. The court had ordered the PML-N president to submit two surety bonds of Rs5 million each.

Mr Kundi said Khursheed Shah had been languishing in prison despite being ill while the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) had failed to prove any allegation against him.

The PPP and the PML-N have been engaged in a war of words against each other since the nomination of Yousuf Raza Gilani as the opposition leader in the Senate.

The PML-N and seven other parties in the PDM not only criticised the PPP for violating the unanimous decision of the PDM under which the Senate opposition leader’s office should have gone to the PML-N, but they were also wary of the PPP’s act of getting the support of the independent senators who had been sitting on the treasury benches and known to have affiliation to the Balochistan Awami Party.

In return, the PPP also alleges that the PML-N had got its senators from Punjab elected unopposed after having an understanding with the ruling Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf. The PPP leaders in their private conversations claim that the PML-N was busy in backdoor negotiations with the “establishment” and the bails of Hamza Shehbaz and Shahbaz Sharif are the result of an understanding.

A senior PPP leader, while talking to Dawn on condition of anonymity, predicted that PML-N’s parliamentary leader in the National Assembly Khawaja Asif would also soon get the bail.

Published in Dawn, April 15th, 2021