In his message on the beginning of the new Islamic year, PPP leader President Asif Ali Zardari urged the nation to nurture the qualities of forbearance and tolerance, and shun all differences to strengthen national unity. A day earlier, talking in a similar tone to his party’s parliamentary leader in the Senate, PML-N leader Mian Nawaz Sharif also called for national unity, emphasising the need to address multifaceted challenges confronting the country. This they said as a relentless political witch-hunt continues against the main opposition party, the PTI.
Its founding chairman Imran Khan, several second tier leaders, and countless activists implicated in multiple legal cases remain in jails for over a year. Whilst the top leaders of the two major components of the ruling coalition were telling the people to show tolerance in the interest of national unity, the police in Islamabad were preparing to arrest Omar Ayub, Leader of the Opposition in the National Assembly. A joint team of Islamabad and Mianwali raided his Islamabad house on Sunday to arrest him in a case registered with an anti-terrorism court in Sargodha, though they returned empty-handed as he had gone into hiding.
Later, faced with a barrage of criticism, the Mianwali police issued a statement claiming that their sub-inspector had gone to the opposition leader’s residence only to serve bailable warrants, not to apprehend him. How then do they explain taking along a team of Islamabad police? The explanation t.
