Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf leader Fawad Chaudhry has predicted the breakout of "full-fledged civil unrest" while citing the violent scenes that unfolded in the Punjab Assembly while blaming the "imported leaders" for bringing the country on the brink of chaos.
Taking to Twitter on Saturday (today), the former information minister said that former prime minister Imran Khan had "exercised restrait but "he won’t be able to stop this very angry mob and we will see [the] country plunging into a civil unrest."
He added that "imported leaders" - an apparent reference to PM Shehbaz Sharif, PPP's Asif Zardari and Fazlur Rehman of JUI-F - will not be able to leave the country.
The situation in the Punjab Assembly turned violent as the Deputy Speak Dost Mazari tried to convene the session to hold the vote for the election of the chief minister with PML-N's Hamza Shehbaz and PML-Q's Pervez Elahi as candidates.
However, PTI lawmakers flung lotas at the deputy speaker, while Mazari was also assaulted, with Punjab police eventually entering the house to bring the situation under control. During the scuffle, Elahi was also injured while accusing his rival Hamza of instigating the attack on him that left him bruised and battered.
Judicial intervention
Another PTI lawmaker, Punjab MPA Fayyaz ul Hassan Chuahan, urged the judiciary to take notice of the violent scenes that took place in the Punjab Assembly on Saturday (today) after which Hamza Shehbaz was elected as the chief minister.
"I hope the courts will declare today's proceedings illegal," he said while speaking to the media outside the Punjab Assembly in the provincial capital Lahore.
"Never in the history of the Punjab Assembly has the sanctity of the House been violated in such a manner where police entered the premises," he said, adding that security of the House is the responsibility of the seargent-in-arms.
"An attack was made on the life of Pervez Elahi," he said while stating that the PML-Q leader ended up with several fractures after being roughed up. "Hamza Shehbaz resorted to intimidation and thuggery [in the PA session]."
He dismissed the suggestion that PTI lawmakers were involved in the violence, stating that they had appraoched the speaker's dias to share their concerns with Dost Mazari. "It is our right to refer to him as lota [turncoat]."
He further stated that the deputy speaker had violated procedure by announcing the convening of the session from the gallery through a loudspeaker.
He went on to claim that PML-N "goons" entered the Assembly, while suggesting that they were responsible for the chaotic scenes that unfolded.
"Shehbaz Sharif should be ashamed," he said, adding that his actions had brought the country to the brink of civil war.