news desk
ISLAMABAD
A day before the opposition is scheduled its final anti-government meeting in Lahore, the government has vowed to launch legal action against elements “provoking” the public to flout coronavirus guidelines for “personal gains”.
Addressing a press conference in Islamabad on Saturday, federal ministers Senator Shibli Faraz and Ali Amin Gandapur slammed the opposition parties for holding mega public meetings during the pandemic, putting lives at risk.
The Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM), an alliance of 11 opposition political parties, gears up for its final meeting in Lahore on Sunday (tomorrow). The meeting comes as a second wave of Covid-19 has gripped Pakistan which miraculously survived the first wave despite public slackness towards the crisis.
However, the luck factor appears to have run its course. The government portal keeping track of the disease reported 2,729 fresh infections of the coronavirus on Saturday after conducting 41,426 tests — a worrying positivity ratio of 6.59 percent. The positivity rate has remained below 2 percent for most of the time between July and September.
The government, however, has failed in persuading the opposition to come to the dialogue table. Despite growing Covid-19 infections and reports of offers of talks save what the prime minister calls NRO-style concession, the PDM leadership has refused to call off the anti-government protests.
To put pressure on the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) government, the PDM has decided in principle to quit legislative assemblies. Earlier this week, Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) leader Rana Sanaullah Khan said a consensus has been reached among PDM parties on resignations from National Assembly to “push the government for a fresh election”.
Addressing the presser, Senator Faraz said the threat of mass resignations is bound to fail “like their previous attempts at getting an NRO” from Prime Minister Imran Khan in graft cases against the opposition leaders.
He said the opposition parties had nothing to do with the public welfare as they claim and they were following the single agenda of receiving an NRO-like concession.
Deposed prime minister and PML-N supreme leader Nawaz Sharif is also expected to address the Sunday meeting where he, Sanaullah said, will make his “decisive” address. Sharif has been residing in London since November last year where he had travelled after securing conditional eight-week bail to receive medical treatment. He has since refused to come back and, in October, launched a political campaign to oust the government.
“We have come out for the supremacy of the law,” Maryam Nawaz, PML-N vice president, maintains. “Our struggle is against injustice, unemployment and all-time price hikes.”
