KARACHI - Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) Senator Saeed Ghani has expressed serious concern over the clash between the PML-N and PTI activists that claimed the life of one PTI activist.
He said the federal and Punjab governments should show calmness and avoid use of force against the protestors.
He said the Faisalabad scenario had proved the federal and Punjab governments had allowed them to be trapped in a snare that unseen umpires had spread. The PTI would be the ultimate beneficiary of the riots and the government might be constrained to reap the harvest which its ministers had sown in Faisalabad.
Ghani said the government had assumed that the Faisalabad’s sit-in was greater in size and intensity than the sit-in of D-Chowk in Islamabad. The PML-N ministers had pushed the strength of their local party workers and sympathisers to punish the PTI but the consequences might be quite alarming and opposite to their expectations.
The strategy of the PML-N leaders and ministers would cause the democracy to pay the highest price which the country could not afford. He said the impact of Faisalabad scenario would be furious at Lahore as it would leave sympathies among the masses in great amount for the PTI.
The PPP senator said the PML-N had always carried two policies at a time, one to lie down when there would be a storm and secondly to become tyrant when recovered from a blow. The protest and sit-in were part of democratic rights of the people and the political parties. These rights should not be suppressed.
He said the protests, rallies and sit-ins were not the novelties as the PPP, in its previous governments, had also tasted them and ensured safety of the people and their property through dialogue with the protestors which the PML-N lacked.
He also asked PTI chairman Imran Khan and other PTI leaders that they should also control their party workers and should avoid use of force for compelling the traders to shut their shops and markets. Use of force for closing the shops and markets was also a serious violation of the basic human rights.
He said the overall situation proved as if the PML-N-led federal and Punjab governments had already been trapped due to their own blunders. Despite that, the PPP has always been advising them to take initiatives for a meaningful dialogue for resolution of the disputes with the PTI.
He demanded the Punjab government to pass immediate orders for judicial inquiry of the violence.