Shahbaz, Bilawal walk out after PM leaves meeting midway

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) President Shahbaz Sharif and Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari walked out of parliamentary leaders’ meeting on coronavirus when Prime Minister Imran Khan left after completing his speech through video link.

Both the opposition leaders and the Prime Minister participated in the meeting through video link. Sharif, criticising the Prime Minister, said he was not even ready to sit down with the opposition. “Is this his level of seriousness. He did not think it important to participate in the full session,” said the Leader of Opposition in the National Assembly.

“The country is faced with the worst calamity in history and the Premier is absent. If this is his level of seriousness, we too will not participate in the session,” said the PML-N chief. He regretted the Prime Minister did not even realise the session was meant to be a consultative one. “We did not have political designs in coming here. We wanted to sit down to debate on how we can save the country together.”

Other members of the PPP and the PML-N, however, continued their participation in the session.

Addressing the meeting, Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-Fazl (JUI-F) leader Maulana Abdul Ghafoor Haideri said it was not the time to play politics as coronavirus was a matter of national security and needed to be dealt with collectively.

Bilawal, addressing a press conference in Karachi through video link earlier in the day, urged the government to expedite coronavirus screening process. He said the federal government would have to play its role positively and efficiently. “It is essential to speed up the screening process and for that we need more testing kits. We also need to establish more quarantine centers in order to isolate suspected and confirmed patients,” he said.

The PPP chairman rejected the economic relief package unveiled by the Prime Minister a day earlier. He called the package deficient and demanded that electricity and gas bills of poor consumers be waived off. He also rejected recent cut in interest rate, calling for it to be brought down further into single digits.