LAHORE: To stop additional harm to the nation’s economy, members of the ruling Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) in the Punjab Assembly called on the federal government on Friday to ban the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI).
The ruling party parliamentarians accused the opposition party of causing disorder and anarchy and committing arson assaults under the pretense of political activities in a resolution that assembly member (MPA) Uzma Kardar filed to the Punjab Assembly Secretariat.
However, in a separate resolution, PTI MPs sharply denounced both the implementation of Section 144 of the Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC) throughout Punjab and “the indiscriminate firing on PTI’s peaceful protesters” that took place in Islamabad’s D-Chowk on November 26.
“The house strongly condemned a specific agenda of a political party that used all of its energy to create law and order, anarchy, and chaos in the garb of peaceful politics,” Kardar wrote in her resolution. She went on to say that the PTI had previously engaged in aggressive and torturing politics.
Kardar claimed that the demonstration on November 24, spearheaded by Ali Amin Gandapur, the chief minister of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P), was a clear illustration of the PTI’s violence, as demonstrators killed Ranger’s Jawans and police officers.
She claimed that the K-P chief minister was more concerned with assaulting the federation with all of its resources—including heavy machinery, armed police officers, and tear gas equipment—than with the issues facing the people in his province.
“By agitating the public and its employees, this party violated the Constitution and replicated the violence on May 9, 2023, to further its objectives. “This party disregarded the ruling of the Islamabad High Court [IHC], which prohibited them from demonstrating in the capital’s Red Zone,” the resolution stated.
The resolution also stated that the country suffered daily losses of Rs190 billion, a Rs140 billion loss to the GDP, and a sharp decline in the Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX) as a result of the PTI protest march earlier this week.
Whether it was the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) Phase-II, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit session, or a visit by the Belarus team, “this gang of chaos mongers tarnished the image of Pakistan.”
The resolutions of PTI
Resolutions denouncing “indiscriminate firing on PTI’s peaceful workers”—which led to the deaths of multiple PTI members—were submitted by Mian Ijaz Shafi and Rana Shehbaz Ahmad. They also denounced Punjab’s implementation of Section 144 CrPC.
According to the PTI resolution, all roads were blocked, making it impossible for even ambulances to travel. “Several patients died in ambulances and several females were deprived of their marriages as their “Baraats” [wedding processions] had to return,” it continued.
