PESHAWAR: Shazia Aurangzeb, one of the active members of the Awami National Party (ANP), has bid adieu to her political party and joined the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) on Saturday.
Aurangzeb was the ANP’s vice-president provincial president and had played a leading role in mobilising women voters for elections through door-to-door campaigns wearing white burqa. However, she lamented that the current ANP leadership “lacks political acumen” thus; she has to join back the PML-N.
In 2012, Shazia had resigned from PML-N claiming that the “PML-N is not a party of workers but a club of leaders.”
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Talking to Mashriq TV, Aurangzeb said, “The current provincial leadership of ANP lacks political acumen. The ANP’s politics is deplorable. It is pursuing weak politics which is benefiting the ruling Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI).” Aurangzeb alleged that the ANP is suffering from internal divisions and it is difficult for activists to stay in the party.
She added that she has joined the PML-N after consultation with her supporters and the elders of her constituency. The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa president of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz Amir Muqam visited her residence in Mardan on Friday and invited Aurangzeb to join his political party. Muqam was accompanied by senior party politicians including Ikhtiar Wali, Jamshed Mohmand, Syed Inayat Bacha and others. She posted photographs of Muqam’s visit on Twitter and wrote, “Am Back Home #PMLN.”
Shazia Aurangzeb belongs to a prominent political family of Mardan. She is the daughter-in-law of late politician Abdul Khaliq Khan who had also changed several parties during his political career. He had started politics from the platform of the Pakistan Muslim League and later joined Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) and had won national assembly seat from in 1970 elections. Khan later joined ANP and elected a MNA and senator from the province. He had left ANP in 1990s and after his death Shazia Aurangzeb joined the PML-N.
Shazia Aurangzeb told Mashriq that only the PML-N can sail out the country from the current political and economic crisis. Responding to the criticism of the ANP workers for leaving the party, she maintained that everyone has the constitutional right to form his/her own party or shift loyalties to other political platform. “It is a democratic process and everyone’s right. We are political people and accept criticism,” she maintained