PPP reform agenda: No sit-in

PPP deadline given to the Punjab government for implementing the 19-point agenda expired without any sit-in occurring.

LAHORE: The Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) deadline given to the Punjab government for implementing the 19-point agenda that the PPP had given expired on Tuesday, without the threat of sit-in materialising.

Instead, adopting a conciliatory tone, Raja Riaz – the PPP senior minister who had sent the agenda to the Pakistan Muslim League- Nawaz (PML-N) – agreed to constitute a committee, which will discuss the reform agenda. The decision came after Riaz met with the Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif on Tuesday. Raja Riaz had warned PML-N last week that PPP members would sit-in in front of the Punjab Assembly if the PML-N failed to implement the agenda in a week.  The meeting took place a day after Governor Latif Khosa assured Law Minister Rana Sanaullah that there would be no sit-in.

In what some PPP provincial office bearers see as “betrayal”, Raja Riaz called on the chief minister at his residence on Tuesday. After the meeting, Riaz told The Express Tribune, “I had a one-on-one meeting with Shahbaz Sharif in which it was decided that a committee be formed to discuss the agenda. The names of the members of the committee will be confirmed in another meeting, which will be held on Thursday.”

Earlier Riaz, while talking to reporters outside his office, said that the PPP after receiving Sharif’s invitation for a meeting had decided to postpone its demonstration and the one-hour sit-in in front of the Punjab Assembly.

The PPP had remained indecisive about the Tuesday sit-in until late Monday night.

Opposition Leader in Punjab Assembly Chaudhry Zaheeruddin commented, “Both the PPP and the PML-N are playing ‘committee-committee’. The committee that is to be formed is just an eye wash and a delaying tactic.”

Published in The Express Tribune, February 9^th, 2011.