Daily Times

LAHORE: Main opposition party in parliament and second major opposition party in Punjab Assembly, the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), succeeded in showing a good street power by holding a big protest rally in Lahore after a long time.

Though Bilawal Bhutto or Asif Asli Zardari were not present, the provincial leadership managed to gather more than 3,000 jialas at Nasir Bagh with hand-fans to show a symbolical protest against PM Nawaz Sharif and Punjab CM Shahbaz Sharif over their failure to provide electricity to the people as per their claims.

On the occasion, the party members also invited the public to suggest some alternative names for Shahbaz Sharif. The names were written on chits that were put in a sealed box; the box was not opened during the protest rally.

According to party leaders, they would open the box to change the name the Punjab CM as per his desire some other time.

The charged PPP workers, carrying placards, poster, and banners of their party leaders, chanted slogans against the rulers.

Addressing the gathering, opposition leader Khurshid Shah said that the rulers had spent Rs 480 billion for ending load shedding but the masses were still facing power outages, and surprisingly no one was being held accountable for wasting such a huge amount.

He said that load shedding of electricity was a serious civic issue, so the PPP would not give a breathing space to the rulers on it.

On the occasion, Senator Aitzaz Ahsan said that the protest camp had been staged to recall Shahbaz Sharif and Nawaz Sharif of the promises they had made to the public during the last general election to end power load shedding within six months.

PPP Central Punjab President Qamar Zaman Kaira, while addressing in Punjabi language, strongly criticised the rulers in the Centre and province and asked Shahbaz Sharif to change his name himself over his failure to overcome load shedding. He also said that no one but international organisations had exposed the corruption of PM Nawaz Sharif.