ISLAMABAD: Pakistan Muslim League-Q (PML-Q) president Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain has urged the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) to consider them a “colleague”, instead of an “enemy.”

In a statement issued from Lahore on Saturday, Mr Hussain said allies always believed in unity and equality.

“Our party is no doubt small but has experience as we have ruled with a two-thirds majority.”

The PML-Q chief said that the statements of Punjab Assembly Speaker Chaudhry Pervez Elahi, federal Minister for Housing and Works Tariq Bashir Cheema, Moonis Elahi or any worker of the party reflected the “truth and patriotism”.

He said some friends drew wrong meaning of those statements and showed clips to Prime Minister Imran Khan to use it for their own objectives.

The PTI, he said, faced danger from its own people and not the allies.

About the case filed by Opposition Leader and PML-N president Shahbaz Sharif against a UK newspaper in a court of London, he said they would see how long Shahbaz Sharif carried this case.

The PML-Q leader recalled that when The Guardian published an incorrect news against him, they had filed a case in the Queen’s Bench of London High Court through prominent lawyers Ejaz Batalvi and Mahmood A. Shaikh.

He said they won the case in just three months and the newspaper published an apology on its front page.

In response to a question, Mr Hussain, who served as interior minister in the cabinet of Nawaz Sharif, said the PML-N’s vote-bank was because of Nawaz Sharif and “Shahbaz Sharif is zero before Nawaz Sharif”.

Government allies have expressed reservations that they are not included in the consultation process, their ministers are helpless in decision-making and that the government has failed to provide any relief to the inflation-hit masses.

Published in Dawn, February 2nd, 2020