Metro buses and power banks — scenes from PMLN rally

MINAR-E-PAKISTAN was covered in the ‘sher’ brand on Saturday, as young men wearing all manner of lion-crested clothes danced to the PML-N’s music, signalling a revival of enthusiasm among party supporters.

From power bank vendors to more out-of-Lahore supporters than Lahoris at the venue, the scenes reported by witnesses from on-the-ground on Saturday’s PML-N rally welcoming Nawaz Sharif back home gave a picture of enthusiasm and some unique responses to Nawaz Sharif’s appeal.

Aleena Farooq Sheikh, host of Geo’s Report Card, was in Lahore covering the rally. Speaking to Naya Pakistan’s Shahzad Iqbal on Saturday night after the rally, she said that initially there was little crowd -- at around 3-4pm -- which she said was something unexpected since the party’s supreme leader was coming back and the thinking was the party would pull out all stops to bring people in for the welcome home rally. However, Sheikh said, “post 5pm people started coming and we also heard that there were people outside the venue as well, cars were stuck outside too....overall, it was an impressive crowd.”

Sheikh added that one thing that stood out for those covering the event was that there were not as many Lahoris at the event as those from outside of the city: “those present here were from Muslim Students Federation (MSF) or from Azad Kashmir and other areas of Punjab. It seems those in the PML-N who were tasked with bringing people to Lahore for the rally, they are the ones who came and filled up the venue”. Co-host of YouTube show ‘Mahozariyan’ Mahwish Bhatti travelled by the Metro bus to Minar-e-Pakistan, and reporting for her show right from the venue, showed a horde of young men dancing with abandon. Her favourite question at the venue: “what makes Mian Sahib glow?” The answers from the enthusiastic supporters went from “he eats halal” to “he uses creams” to “he will bring back economic prosperity”.

One particular young man interviewed by her had come all the way from Gujranwala on a bike. When asked why one couldn’t find anything to eat at the venue, the man said “when you’re this passionate you don’t feel hungry!”, laughingly adding “you can say we have fasted before coming here!” Bhatti asked another supporter whether the establishment would be happy at Nawaz Sharif’s return. The answer: the establishment tried with an experiment that failed: “Mian Sb is the only option now”.

One of the more interesting things noted by Bhatti was the fact that vendors were selling power banks at the venue, something she said showed enterprise “since they knew people would be covering the event and using their phones.” Natasha Zai, a freelance journalist covering Nawaz’s homecoming rally, tells The News that a leader’s “popularity can be judged by how enthusiastically he’s received by the crowd at a rally.”

According to her estimations, “PML-N leader from Chilas, Engineer Muhammad Anwar, is a genuinely popular leader amongst his people. Before Nawaz Sharif came on stage, other PML-N leaders were climbing up one by one, waving to the crowd. The loudest cheer was not for Saad Rafique or Ayaz Sadiq, both major figures from Lahore. It was for Engineer Muhammad Anwar, a surprise for me. Talking to people before the jalsa began, the Chilas crowd was the most energetic and enthusiastic. They were all wearing white caps with a decorative feather up front. You can see the footage, the white caps were the ones having the most fun.” She adds that: “among the rest, Ahsan Iqbal seemed the second most popular leader, if an enthusiastic welcome from the crowd is an indicator of popularity. He got a resounding cheer and lots of applause.”

Talking to The News about the food arrangements at the rally venue, Asfand Gurmani, reporter at The Current covering the rally, says that some of the people he spoke with “those from Rawalpindi or Bahawalpur or other places told me that they had not gotten any food since they reached the venue and they had to spend their own money for food and water.” Vendors at the venue were selling” channa chaat and samosas and water, perhaps because there was none or little water arrangement at the venue.”

He adds that most of the people he talked to were “happy and hopeful that [with Nawaz Sharif’s return] they would get a respite from the economic misery and inflation and unemployment -- though there are some who felt nothing would change economically for them.”

Earlier in the day, as Nawaz took the journey from Dubai to Islamabad and then onward to Lahore after passport control at the Islamabad airport, there were reports of scuffles on the plane. A BBC report by Tarhub Asghar said that while in the plane “journalists and activists were angry because they were not being allowed to take selfies with Mian Sahib”. At one point, reports BBC, there was also a scuffle between PML-N party workers and journalists, which escalated to a fight. Perhaps in a more bizarre turn of events, the report also mentions that when the plane was to depart from Islamabad for Lahore, there was apparently one ‘missing passenger’.