The Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) on Tuesday night nominated 72-year-old Shehbaz as the prime ministerial candidate.To form a government, a party must win 133 seats out of 265 contested seats in the 266-member National Assembly.Independent candidates, mostly backed by Khan’s PTI, won 101 seats.Former prime minister Nawaz Sharif’s PML-N has won 75 seats and former foreign minister Bilawal Bhutto’s PPP has secured 54 seats.The PTI-backed candidates ran as independents due to the party losing the election symbol of bat’ following controversy surrounding its intra-party elections.Gohar Ali Khan also invited other political parties to participate in the protests against the alleged rigging.”All we ask is that you participate and it is a question of your freedom,” he said.He also warned against the arrest of its workers who would be joining peaceful protests which is their legal and constitutional right.Earlier, PTI leader Hammad Azhar had said in a message that his party would soon hold a protest procession across Punjab province against the alleged rigging.”All the candidates and workers of Punjab should start preparing for a peaceful protest on an emergency basis,” he said in a message on X.He had also announced that people should prepare to come out on Imran Khan’s call against the stolen mandate’.Separately, party leader Asad Qaisar said after meeting Imran Khan that the party would join Parliament and filed Umar Ayub Khan as a candidate for prime minister.PTI has learnt a lesson from its past mistake of resigning from Parliament and from Punjab and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa provincial assemblies in 2022 which added to its hardships.The PTI decided to resign enmasse in 2022 after Imran Khan’s government lost a no-confidence motion against him in Parliament and had to resign.The new plan is to sit in the assemblies and also launch protests.Its previous strategy failed when it resigned to force the government to hold snap polls, and it is too early to say if the new policy would succeed.
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