Punjab Governor Saleem Haider has said that the Pakistan People’s Party is against the controversial defamation law passed by the provincial legislature earlier this month. “I tried to stop the [passage] of the defamation bill as governor,” he said while speaking to the media in Dubai on Sunday. His statement comes a day after interim Punjab Governor Malik Ahmad Khan signed the bill into law in the absence of Haider. The Punjab Assembly, on May 20, passed the Punjab Defamation Bill, 2024 amid a strong and noisy protest by the opposition as well as immense backlash from journalists and rights bodies including those based internationally.
