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Today's Paper | March 18, 2026

Updated 28 Jul, 2018 09:32pm

Shahbaz boasts of ticket transparency but his reserved seat list tells a different story

The story begins with Shahbaz Sharif oh-so-proudly claiming in today's Dawn that the PML-N is the only political party that conducted marathon meetings to decide who gets to contest the upcoming polls.

"Each candidate was interviewed during the meetings in order to make the process of awarding tickets transparent and democratic" — Shahbaz

He says that before going on to criticise — in a rather ambiguous manner — his rivals' choices.

Accompanying that story in today's edition is Amir Wasim's analysis, which shows that the PML-N's lists of reserved seats for NA and provincial assemblies looks more a family tree than a well-thought-out product of the "transparent and democratic" process Shahbaz is talking about.

The NA list features mother-daughter duo of Tahira and Marriyum Aurangzeb in first and fourth spots respectively, and that's just the start. Multiple kin of Khawaja Asif have been accommodated, Tariq Fatemi's missus is on it too — the list goes on.

Give both the stories a read and then decide what to make of Shahbaz's claim.

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