Lahore:
The confusion continues to swirl within the PPP on its alleged plans to organize a national protest against the federal budget, while contradictory voices emerge from the rows of the party.
While some initiates deny such a plan, others argue that a strategy was indeed in preparation, but mainly motivated by the party’s wing of the party, because the central party was not fully engaged in the decision.
The Pakistani peoples’ party, including the senior Chaudhary Manzoor leader announced a protest on a national level against the draft budget, remains a key coalition partner in the federal government.
Without its support, the government led by PML-N would be left on a member. Any appeal of official protest from the central leadership of the party would report a withdrawal of support for the financial bill, throwing the passage of the budget seriously.
However, the leaders of the Party to which La PK Press Club Express spoke suggested that Manzoor’s call was more a solo flight than a coordinated party line. While some leaders in the center of Punjab are gathering behind, this decision has not received a formal green light from the best brass of the party.
According to the initiates, the protest plan was shaped as an attempt to draw from the growing dissatisfaction among the farmers and the workers who had remained high and dry by government policies.
The celebration, by reaching out to farmers and workers, would try to collect support before embarking on any protest plan, because there is enough muscle in Punjab to hit the roads without them.
Vice-president Director of Punjab Rana Faroo Saeed said they had not been informed by the party of a protest plan. He wondered under the direction of the authority that Manzoor had made.
However, he added that the party does not approve of the budget, because it offered nothing to farmers and workers. “It would even be wrong to call this a budget,” he said. However, despite these reservations, the party has not yet made an official decision.
“Since we are allies at the center, we cannot make impulsive statements against the budget,” he said.
The secretary general of the central party, Hasan Murtaza, avoided giving a direct response concerning any party provides for a protest demonstration throughout the country.
He said they were government allies and would try to put a certain sense in the PML-N on the blatant budget differences. If the dialogue failed, he added, they would eventually arrive at the roads.
When asked if the Central Party had rejected the budget, which would mean that the PPP would refuse its support, he said that the decision would be made by the Central Management. However, he said that the party would not “defend PML-N” errors.
“They will not carry their weight while they aspire the lives of the poor and border their own pockets,” he said.
He listed several grievances, of the non-renegency of payments to the taxation of solar panels.
Asked about the recognition by the high leader of Naved Qamar of in-depth consultation sessions with the PML-N on the budget, he replied that “the consultation does not mean that their inputs are being incorporated”.
On Thursday, several media indicated that the PPP had rejected the federal budget for the next fiscal year and announced a protest campaign nationally against it.
The impression was formed after Chaudhary Manzoor Ahmad, who led the PPP popular work office, castigated the federal government at a press conference in Islamabad for having presented a budget that promotes the rich and ignores the miseries of the working class and the poor.
The leader of the PPP said that the party had started to contact the unions across the country to mobilize support for protest demonstrations. He declared that demonstrations would be held in all the provinces before the adoption of the federal budget in the National Assembly.
When the senior PPP official Naveed Qamar was invited to comment on the budget, he said the party acknowledged that the government was walking a tightr -string as part of the IMF program.
However, he also declared that government policies were ill -aligned and that if the PPP conceived the budget, it would have been very different.
At no time during the program, he completely rejected the budget or announced plans for protest gatherings.
