Party plans welcome rally: Nawaz may give four-point agenda this time round

LAHORE, April 30: Pakistan Muslim League-N chief Nawaz Sharif will share a four-point agenda with the masses when he returns from London most-probably by May 10. The PML-N chief had announced a 10-point agenda in January for the PPP-led federal government to follow to `improve governance and steer the country out of the crises` it was faced with. The four-point agenda, said one of the 18 members of a PML-N committee formed recently to make arrangements for a `befitting` reception for the party chief, would encompass price-hike, corruption of the federal government, energy crisis and terrorism. The committee, headed by senior PML-N leader and advisor to the chief minister Sirdar Zulfiqar Khosa, had held its meeting at the Chief Minister`s Secretariat on Wednesday last to discuss arrangements for the proposed reception. The member, who is also a party MNA, said the agenda might be unfolded by Mr Sharif at the end of the welcome procession the committee was planning to take out from the Lahore airport up to the shrine of Syed Ali Hajveri (Data Ganj Bakhsh). He said the party chief would also launch a mass-contact drive on his return which was likely to gain momentum after the month of Ramazan. Asked if Mr Sharif, who had undergone a heart surgery recently in London, would be able to take on the stress of the proposed mass-contact campaign and that if the security aspect had been considered, he said in the meeting consensus was that the leadership would have to take such risks if the party had to survive. He said it was all the more necessary at a time when the PPP and PML-Q were going to join hands. Senator Pervaiz Rashid, who is Punjab government`s spokesperson as well as a member of the reception committee, insisted that it was not the party policy "to waste its energies in holding receptions for the leadership". Though he did not deny the proceedings of the meeting which discussed the Mr Sharif`s return, he said the arrangements being made to welcome the party chief should be taken as plan of some individuals and not the party. — Amjad Mahmood