PML-N says will play effective opposition role after election defeat

In this file photo, Shahbaz Sharif, center, the younger brother of ousted Pakistani prime minister Nawaz Sharif and the head of Pakistan Muslim League -Nawaz (PML-N), waves to supporters during an election campaign meeting in Karachi on June 26, 2018. (ASIF HASSAN/AFP)

• An emergency meeting of the PML-N’s Central Executive Committee (CEC) was called on Thursday by the party’s president, Shahbaz Sharif
• The CEC said the election was rigged, and there was a calculated move to sideline the PML-N from mainstream politics

LAHORE: Despite saying its “mandate has been stolen,” the Pakistan Muslim League — Nawaz (PML-N) said it will play an effective opposition role in the National Assembly following its election defeat this week.
An emergency meeting of the PML-N’s Central Executive Committee (CEC) was called on Thursday by the party’s president, Shahbaz Sharif. 
The CEC said the election was rigged, and there was a calculated move to sideline the PML-N from mainstream politics.
“Not a single member of the CEC believes that the elections were fair and transparent,” a participant in the meeting told Arab News. “It’s a pre-planned rigging that continued until the results were announced.”
Sharif said: “We will effectively play our role as opposition.”
PML-N spokeswoman Maryam Aurangzeb said it is convening an all-parties conference in Islamabad to “expose the characters involved in rigging.”
The heads of four other parties (Muttahida Majlise Amal, the Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan, the Awami National Party and the Pak Sarzameen Party) have made the same allegation.
Aurangzeb said: “What had been done behind the doors of locked rooms, we do not know.” The vote-rigging spanned several months, she added.