LAHORE - Mian Manzoor Ahmed Wattoo, President Punjab PPP, while talking to a delegation of youth said that it was not appropriate to drag judiciary into the political disputes.
“Political issues should be resolved by the political parties with the spirit of accommodation rather than resorting to brinkmanship”, he said as a delegation of Punjab People’s Youth called on him here on Wednesday. Wattoo was of the view that present crisis was the product of the wrong policies of the present government and ,therefore, it shared the major responsibility for its resolution. He said that if the PML-N government had accepted the demands of Imran Khan earlier regarding the opening of the four constituencies of Lahore the present political crisis would have not surfaced in the first place.
Mian Manzoor Ahmed Wattoo mentioned that the use of brutal force by the Punjab Chief Minister in the Model Town incident killing 14 PAT workers triggered the wave of anger against the government right across the country. The condemnation of the incident by all sections of society reduced the credibility of the government to the lowest ebb, he observed. The situation further aggravated when the government functionaries refused to register FIR against the culprits under the garb of one pretext or another, he said.
Wattoo argued that the government would have been on high moral ground if the Chief Minister had resigned over the abhorrent incident. It exploded in the face of his so called good governance of Punjab Chief Minister, he stated. He reminded that the Chief Minister should honour his commitment of resigning from the highest office of the Punjab govt as the Judicial Commission had held him responsible for the Model Town incident. He reiterated that the govt had to grant “safe passage” to Imran Khan and Dr. Tahir-ul- Qadri to end the stalemate that had been keeping the nation as its hostage for the last four weeks. He urged the PTI and PAT leadership to create a degree of flexibility in their positions that might precipitate the efforts to find a win win face saving situation. He expressed the resolve of the party for upholding the cause of the Constitution and democracy because these were the legacies of the party leadership and therefore non-negotiable. He reiterated that the party would continue the struggle for the empowerment of the poor people of the country and would not rest till the culmination of the ultimate objective that harmonised with party’s political philosophy.