LAHORE - Senior leaders of the PPP and the PML-N gathered here at Bilawal House on Monday to formulate a joint strategy against the present government which they believe has failed to come up to the expectations of the people.
They agreed to hold an All Parties Conference after Eid-ul-Azha and also constituted a joint coordination committee of the opposition parties to expedite the process.
The PML-N delegation comprised Ahsan Iqbal, Khawaja Saad Rafique and former Speaker National Assembly Sardar Ayaz Sadiq, while former Prime Minister Raja Pervaiz Ashraf, Qamar Zaman Kaira, Ch Manzoor and Syed Hassan Murtaza assisted party chairman Bilawal Bhutto during the meeting.
Later, talking to the media after the meeting, senior PPP leader Qamar Zaman Kaira announced the names of the joint committee. PML-N’s Khawaja Asif, Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, Ahsan Iqbal, Ayaz Sadiq, and Rana Sanaullah will be members of the committee while the PPP will be represented by Raja Pervaiz Ashraf, Nayyar Bukhari, Naveed Qamar, Sherry Rehman and Farhat ullah Babar. Kaira said that other opposition parties will also become part of the committee at a later stage and its meeting will be held this week in Islamabad.
“It is need of the hour to form a joint strategy to get rid of this incompetent government”, Kaira said, adding that the opposition will have to meet the expectations of the people. Talking about NAB activism against the opposition parties, Kaira said that a seasoned politician like Syed Khursheed Shah was in NAB’s custody for the last ten months while Punjab’s opposition leader Hamza Shehbaz was also behind bars. “These are glaring examples of NAB-Niazi alliance”, he said and urged the NAB to prove its impartiality.
PML-N Secretary General Ahsan Iqbal said that both the PPP and PML-N were on the same page to get rid of the government.