LAHORE: In light of the country’s current battle with coronavirus, National Assembly Opposition Leader Shehbaz Sharif on Monday called for a video conference of all political parties to discuss the coronavirus pandemic.
Shehbaz, who returned to Pakistan on Sunday after spending four months with his ailing brother Nawaz Sharif in London, stated that no political party can deal with such an issue by itself. “The purpose of the video conference is to take all parties on board,” he said.
According to PML-N spokesperson Marriyum Aurangzeb, the objective of the meeting is to draw up a strategy to tackle the coronavirus outbreak.
The federal government on Sunday approached the opposition parties for a joint strategy against coronavirus, with National Assembly Speaker Asad Qaiser summoning a meeting of the parliamentary leaders of Senate and Lower House to discuss the economic situation and affected cases. The meeting was called on Mar 25 to review the role of the parliament for containing the spread of the pandemic.
For the above-mentioned purpose, the government on Sunday started approaching the opposition leaders for talks in a bid to put political differences aside and devise a joint strategy to fight coronavirus.
Yesterday, after Shehbaz arrived in Pakistan, Qaiser telephoned him and informed him about the establishment of the Parliamentary Committee on Coronavirus. The speaker said that the committee will monitor the steps of the government and forward its suggestions to the government.
Qaiser observed that a clear message needs to be sent to the people that their leadership was standing side by side with them. He asked Shehbaz for giving the names of his party’s representatives for the parliamentary committee so that it could start functioning.
In return, Shahbaz hailed the speaker’s efforts to unite political leadership in this difficult time. “We need to think beyond politics to tackle the coronavirus being a global epidemic,” he said.
