LAHORE, Sept 6: Dissatisfied with the performance of senior PML-N leadership in mobilising workers and supporters for the Sept 10 reception in Islamabad, former prime minister Nawaz Sharif is himself contacting lower tiers of the party.
The exiled leader remained engaged on Thursday talking to district-level office-bearers, parliamentarians, nazims and other figures in the party, with his son-in-law Capt Safdar (retired) dialing Pakistan-based phone numbers for him.
A senior PML-N official told Dawn that Mr Sharif, who was already displeased over reports of lack of coordination among provincial office-bearers, especially in Punjab, and lack of the motivation, got further perturbed when most of whom he talked to here said that the local leadership was not effectively mobilising the masses for his reception.
He contacted each PML-N MP from Lahore besides others and got firsthand information about the arrests of active PML-N workers by the government.
The official said though Mr Sharif made contacts in Sindh and Balochistan provinces too, his focus was and, would be during the next couple of days, on Punjab and the NWFP.
Keeping in view the possibility of government blocking all routes to Islamabad to keep PML-N workers of other cities away from the federal capital, the party as well as Mr Sharif were concentrating on Rawalpindi and Islamabad districts to assemble maximum people at the airport.
For this reason, PML-N acting president Makhdoom Javed Hashmi has also been directed to leave his hometown in Multan and stay put in Islamabad for enhancing the pace of mass mobilisation there, the official added.
Mr Hashmi had been in Multan since the death of his brother a couple of weeks ago and hospitalisation of his brother-in-law following a heart attack.
Punjab secretary-general Raja Ashfaq Sarwar has already left for his hometown Murree to build a momentum for the reception.
The PML-N is also working out its options in case the government arrests Mr Sharif on his arrival and puts him in prison (most likely the Attock Jail where he was detained before his banishment to Saudi Arabia in December 2000). The party, however, believes that the government will not take the risk of violating the Supreme Court order by deporting him this time.
Party officials say that Mr Sharif is ready to brace the difficulties of imprisonment. They say the party has already prepared `plan B’ in view of the likely arrest. Under the plan Begum Kulsoom Nawaz, and her sons Husain Nawaz and Hasan Nawaz are staying back in London to monitor the situation and take appropriate measures accordingly in consultation with the party high command.
Mr Sharif will be accompanied by his younger brother and former Punjab chief minister Shahbaz Sharif, daughter Maryam and son-in-law Mr Safdar during his return from London to Islamabad.
The family will travel to Dubai in a commercial flight and from there a chartered plane will carry them to Islamabad in the afternoon, the officials say.
They warn of large-scale violence if the government attempts to prevent PML-N activists from reaching the Islamabad airport.
They hope that despite all obstacles likely to be created by the authorities at least 100,000 activists will reach the airport to welcome their exiled leaders.
