Don’t make the villain a hero: PPP

Karachi: The PPP on Saturday said the cipher saga was a drama staged for personal political gains that had led to the May 9 events, as senior party leader Sharjeel Inam Memon blasted the PTI founding chairman for his actions.

“Don’t make the nation’s villain a hero,” the PPP leader said and added that the real political leaders had spent years in prison and faced much tougher situation, but didn’t compromise on their principles.

He said that the parties using their constitutional right were declared traitors by using the cipher drama and the youth had been misguided – a reference to the tactics used by the PTI leadership before and after passage of no-confidence motion.

Memon said they had great respect for the top court judges, but expressed his reservations over the remarks passed and observations given by the three-member bench which granted bail to the PTI founding chairman and the then former foreign minister, Shah Mehmood Qureshi.

Addressing a press conference in Karachi, he rejected the impression that the PTI former chairman was an important political leader and reminded media persons at a press conference in Karachi how he had been installed through the manipulated elections in 2018.

Waving the cipher at a political rally was a historical fact, he said and asked whether the leaders of large political parties were immune from the Constitution and law.

Memon also recalled how the PTI founding chairman was welcomed at the Supreme Court by the then chief justice and noted that he had been and still was a favourite [ladla].

While noting that the judgement was public property which could be commented upon, he criticised the judges for declaring the PTI founding chairman as a big political leader. “Those for whom rallies are ‘arranged’ are not big leaders.”

The PPP leader said the PTI founding chairman was the one who had no respect for the Constitution, acted unconstitutionally and wanted to impose presidential system on Pakistan.

He went on to say that the PTI was imposed on the country after shutting down the RTS in 2018 and should have been banned soon after the foreign funding case judgement passed by the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP).