ISLAMABAD, Jan 29: With only a handful of weeks left for Prime Minister Raja Pervez Ashraf in the government, the PPP leader is making full use of his position as the chief executive of the country to woo voters from his home constituency in Gujar Khan.

On Tuesday, he invited over 200 lawyers, the members of the Gujar Khan Bar Association, to a high tea at the Prime Minister’s Secretariat.

On the face of it, the event was organised to administer oath to elected office-bearers of the bar association, but the invitation was extended to all members of the association, not just the office-bearers.

So, after the oath-taking ceremony administrated by Law Minister Farooq H. Naek well over 200 invitees were served with tea and delicacies.

This is not the first time that Mr Ashraf has invited people from his home constituency to munch on freshly cooked food at the expense of taxpayers’ money.

Since his election as premier in June last year, the prime minister has had been regularly inviting what his media wing calls ‘notables’ from his hometown of Gujar Khan for lunches and dinners.

In his speech on the occasion, Prime Minister Ashraf had nothing new to say except reiterate his party’s mantra — political reconciliation and completion of the five-year term by assemblies.

“We introduced politics of patience, tolerance and reconciliation which has started paying dividends,” Prime Minister Ashraf told the audience. He said that with a strong democratic set-up and with the completion of the tenure of democratically elected parliament for the first time in the history of the country, it had been recognised that affairs of the country could only be run through a democratic system.

He said that with the completion of the tenure of the present government, democracy had been strengthened and all the stakeholders had forged a consensus that the democratic system should stay.