PML-N’s anti-govt drive ‘to start from Lal Haveli’

Central leadership devising strategy to sidestep police crackdown

RAWALPINDI: After Eid, the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) will kick-off its protest campaign against the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) government from outside Lal Haveli – the residence of Federal Minister for Railways Sheikh Rashid Ahmed.

According to the PML-N sources, the party leadership is giving final touches to the arrangements wherein consultations are under way for ensuring maximum participation of workers in the movement and avoiding action by the police and the administration. The PML-N youth wing will be in the vanguard in the movement, they added.

The sources told Express that the PML-N will start the joint protest campaign of all the opposition parties from Rawalpindi, while the first protest demonstration will be held outside Federal Minister Sheikh Rashid’s residence-Lal Haveli.

“In the protest, political workers will chant slogans outside Lal Haveli and burn tyres at the Bohar Bazaar roundabout against the soaring inflation,” they said. “In the first protest demonstration, the central leadership of the PML-N will not participate, while its youth wing has been given the responsibility of gathering as many workers as they can and expand the circle of anti-government protests in every nook and cranny of the city.”

Party sources informed that the party’s central leadership had not yet decided as to who would lead the protest movement from Rawalpindi as former MNA Hanif Abbasi had challenged his conviction in the ephedrine case and adopted a stance that he would not fully participate in any political activity until a decision on his appeal. On the other and, the names of former state minister Marriyum Aurangzeb, former NA candidate Chaudhry Danial, former Rawalpindi mayor Sardar Naseem Khan and former MNA Malik Shakeel Awan were under consideration.

Sources said former parliamentary secretary Chaudhry Sarfraz Afzal had been tasked with refreshing the PML-N youth wing.

“The PML-N central leadership is also using the platform of its youth wing to win back its irate local leaders and workers and utilize all resources in order to make the first protest demonstration a success,” said the sources, adding that the local leaders of Rawalpindi had agreed to initiate the protest movement from the city while a strategy was in the making to bring the maximum number of PML-N workers out on the streets.

“Consultations will also be held with the PPP, Rawalpindi leaders and a desire has been expressed to demonstrate full political unity in the first protest demonstration. Orders have been placed for party flags, banners and anti-government placards,” said the sources.

Sources said that fears were rife among the PML-N camp that at the start of the protest movement against the PTI government a police crackdown would be initiated and leaders as well as the workers would be arrested.

The central leadership had been made aware of this reservation so that practical steps could be taken to provide legal protection to the workers and devise an effective reply to any action taken by the police or the administration.