PPP ratchets up pressure on PM to stand aside

PPP chairman calls for ‘Go Nawaz, go’ rallies in each district headquarters

ISLAMABAD: The Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) has ratcheted up pressure on Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif who has refused to succumb to pressure from an increasingly hostile opposition to step down.

“PPP’s ‘Go Nawaz, go’ rallies in Multan, Bahawalpur and Dera Ghazi Khan are a prelude. Premier Sharif must resign before the people of Pakistan show him the red card,” PPP Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari said on Saturday.

Bilawal’s statement came a day after all main opposition parties had agreed that Sharif must resign following the damning report of the JIT on the murky business dealings of the ruling family abroad.

“Sharif & Co. has proved that the politicians groomed in the lap of military dictators joined politics for ulterior motives,” the PPP’s young chairman said.



“The only way out for Sharif is to resign,” he said and advised the prime minister to give up confrontation with the state institutions for his financial crimes.

“Isn’t it shocking that the assets of every member of the Sharif family had swelled by 16.6 per cent on average between 1991 and 1993 according to the JIT findings!”

The PPP chairman reminded Sharif of his promise that he would step down if evidence of financial corruption was brought forth against him. “Now, he is reluctant to honour his word when a box full of evidence has been brought against him,” he added.

Bilawal appreciated PPP’s leaders and workers from the impoverished South Punjab for launching the movement against ‘Sharif & Co.’, who have caused “immense damage to democracy in Pakistan”.

He warned that ‘Go Nawaz, go’ rallies would continue until the prime minister agreed to resign. He appealed to his supporters to organise similar rallies in every district headquarters of the country to tell Sharif that 200 million Pakistanis wanted to see his back.



Premier Sharif has dismissed the calls for his resignation saying that he would not give in to a ‘clique of conspirators’. However, PPP leader Qamar Zaman Kaira has asked him to name the ‘conspirators’.

“The PPP doesn’t see any conspiracy against the prime minister,” Kaira told journalists on Saturday. “The PPP should know if any conspiracy is being hatched against democracy.”

“We have asked Sharif umpteen times to tell us who is conspiring against his government … [but] he is not telling us anything,” Kaira said. “If there is any conspiracy against democracy, then share it with us.”

Kaira went on to add that the PML-N needed not to worry about the democratic process as the PPP would take care of it. “We and the people of Pakistan are the guardians of democracy,” he said.