Daily Times

LAHORE: Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Punjab Organiser Chaudhry Muhammad Sarwar has said that his party would soon launch a mass contact campaign across Punjab.

Sarwar said his party had not entered parliament through a “back door” but through the votes of people, and those trying to de-seat its legislators will be ousted by the masses in the next election. He was talking to Punjab Assembly opposition leader Mian Mahmoodur Rasheed and PTI Punjab Deputy Organiser Sibtain Khan and others at his office on Friday. He stated that there would be no use of general elections without proper electoral reforms. Accusing the incumbent rulers of having set records of failure and inability, Sarwar said they must know that they cannot “fool then masses any more”.

The PTI leader said his party was playing the role of a “real opposition” in parliament and fighting for the rights of people of Pakistan. During the meeting, Punjab opposition leader Mahmoodur Rasheed remarked that the local bodies’ elections have become a nightmare for the PML-N and it was trying to avoid them. He condemned the ruling PML-N for allegedly trying to delay the local bodies’ elections. Rasheed said that the PTI would raise its voice against the rulers’ actions against the local bodies’ institutions at every forum, including the Punjab Assembly. He said that the PTI would compel the PML-N to hold the local bodies’ elections.

Meanwhile, PTI Punjab’s minority wing held a protest demonstration against the provincial government of PML-N for issuing the Local Government Amendment Ordinance. The protest was held in front of the Lahore Press Club on Friday. PTI Punjab President Ejaz Chaudhry and minorities MPA Shenila Ruth led the protesters, who were carrying placards, banners and party flags and chanting slogans against the ordinance and the provincial government. Addressing the gathering, Ejaz rejected the ordinance and said that his party would challenge it in the courts if the Shahbaz Sharif government does not withdraw it. He said that the imposition of this ordinance was an “oppressive act” of the rulers and amounts to suppressing the democratic rights of people.

Ejaz said that the imposition of this ordinance at a time when a democratic and parliamentary system exists in the country, was “murder of democracy by the dictatorial rulers of the PML-N”. It is a repressive act of the government, he said, adding that it snatches the right to elect the representatives of labourers, farmers, women, youth and minorities directly through the ballot. The PTI leader said that the government was not serious about conducting the local government elections, “as it feared losing its dictatorial powers and the development funds”. Addressing the gathering Shenila Ruth said that her party would oppose the ordinance at every platform, as it was a move to select “blue-eyed” people of the rulers in the local governments.