PML-N to launch mass contact drive, nationwide anti-govt protests

Party President Shehbaz Sharif likely to lead movement expected to begin next month

LAHORE: The Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) will soon launch a mass contact drive to build up a movement against the current Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) government which will be followed by a series of countrywide protests, according to PML-N Punjab Leader Rana Mashhood Ahmad Khan.

He said after the mass contact drive or alongside it, the party would launch countrywide protests against increases in inflation, poverty and joblessness as well as government incompetence, adding  that the road map for the mass contact drive and protests in Punjab would be finalized in an upcoming PML-N Punjab chapter meeting next week.

He said that the movement was expected to start at the end of February but that no dates had yet been finalized and that the plan had been suggested to JUI-F chief Maulana Fazl ur Rehman by PML-N supremo and former prime minister Mian Muhammad Nawaz Sharif along with a then request to the JUI-F chief to defer his Azadi March. The PML-N, he said, intended to now follow the same plan.

He also said the PML-N had nearly completed its Punjab reorganization and there was thus a consensus within the party on launching the movement soon, adding that Mian Muhammad Shehbaz Sharif would return to Pakistan in February and would hopefully spearhead the anti-government movement. He said even if, for unforeseen reasons, Shehbaz had to delay his return to Pakistan, the plan to launch the movement on the agreed upon date would remain unchanged. Regarding bringing an in-house change in Punjab, he said that the party was undecided on it as it was not likely to benefit the party. He also rejected the notion that his party had abandoned its narrative of civilian supremacy, saying it still strongly supported that narrative.

Interestingly, another party leader considered very close to Nawaz Sharif said that the party, in essence, had momentarily abandoned its narrative in order to bring itself back to the bargaining table. He said that Shehbaz Sharif, who had long been an advocate of reconciliation, was, for the first time since taking control of the party, now running the show with the permission of his elder brother. He further said Nawaz Sharif and Maryam Nawaz both knew the consequences of speaking up. But he said the party would stand by its narrative of civilian supremacy upon returning to power.

Meanwhile, Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari was also expected to visit Punjab to advance his party’s mass contact drive in the province in February, according to PPP parliamentary leader Hasan Murtaza. Murtaza said the PPP started its Punjab mass contact drive in Rawalpindi on December 27, the day on which it had commemorated its slain leader Benazir Bhutto’s martyrdom. Bilawal’s visit, he said, would be a weeklong trip during which he would address workers’ conventions and conferences in Lahore and Sahiwal.