Around 60 parliamentarians have expressed serious reservations at the 'disturbing' revelations in the Joint Investigation Team's report and are reluctant to endorse Kulsoom Nawaz's candidacy in the vacated NA 120 seat which, they argue, would bring the disqualified Prime Minister back into the PM House. This was revealed in background interviews with PML-N members of the National Assembly and Senate.
Talking to Business Recorder, the party's dissident Senator Sardar Zulfiqar Ali Khan Khosa said that the first rift within the party appeared when over 80 members of the National Assembly abstained from the budget session last year and it has further been deepened over time due to the policies of the party's senior leadership.
"There is a strong feeling within the party parliamentarians against the senior party leadership (Nawaz Sharif), though all are not yet expressing this in face to face interactions with him, yet they are speaking about it quite openly in private", he said, adding Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan's outburst in his 27 July press conference, a day before Nawaz Sharif's disqualification, brought the rift within the party into the limelight. The resignation of Riaz Hussain Pirzada, a senior cabinet minister of Nawaz Sharif on April 28, 2017, was a further indication of a rift within the party's parliamentarians.
To a question about "minus-one formula", he said minus-one formula will include all those who have surfaced in the Supreme Court verdict on Panama Papers case. "Plundering of national wealth took place; money laundering did take place for how long will the people remain quiet? The party workers have started realizing what the party leadership was engaged in", he added. Khosa praised PTI chairman Imran Khan and Sheikh Rashid for exposing the corruption that has eroded the very foundations of the country.