Islamabad: Thousands of demonstrators took to the streets in two major Pakistani cities on Saturday as the opposition stepped up its campaign against Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and his family over corruption allegations.
The head of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), Imran Khan, led a rally in Lahore, capital of Punjab province and the political stronghold of Sharif’s family.
In Rawalpindi, adjoining Islamabad, the firebrand chief of the religious-political group Pakistan Awami Tehreek (PAT), Islamic scholar Dr Tahirul Qadri, and Shaikh Rashid, who leads a Muslim League faction, led separate rallies.
PAT is demanding justice over the killing of 14 of its workers and the injuries sustained by scores in police firing in Lahore in June 2014, an incident for which it blames the prime minister and his younger brother and Punjab chief minister Shahbaz Sharif.
In a brief address to supporters at the start of the march into Lahore from the city suburbs, Imran Khan hit out at what he called corruption and plunder of national wealth.
He alleged that the prime minister’s family had amassed assets abroad, including property in London, with huge amounts of money secretly transferred from Pakistan.
Citing leaked documents of a Panama-based law firm, Imran accused the prime minister of evading judicial inquiry into disclosures related to off-shore holdings of his children.
Local television channels showed traffic chaos as a consequence of the opposition rallies and the barricades put up on roads by the administration using shipping containers.
The reports said a child died in Lahore as his parents failed to find a way out of the gridlock.
Minister for Information and Broadcasting, Pervaiz Rashid, blamed “political adventures” for the mayhem.
Talking to media in Lahore, Rashid said the country’s second largest city suffered losses to the tune of 4 billion rupees (Dh138.9 million) on account of disruptions caused by the protest.
Rashid said security arrangements put in place by the administrations in Lahore and Rawalpindi had incurred expenditure amounting to 5 million rupees.
Prime Minister Sharif said his political rivals wanted to create a climate of instability to pursue their political ambitions but his government would complete the remaining year and half of its five-year term.
Speaking at the inauguration of an energy project on Friday, the prime minister vowed that his party would also win the next general elections in 2018 because of its development-oriented performance and people’s confidence in its policies.
