Govt ignoring Opp on crucial issues: Nisar

ISLAMABAD
Yousaf Raza Gilani’s government is not taking the opposition into confidence over crucial national issues just like the previous regime, Leader of the Opposition in the National Assembly Nisar Ali Khan said on Friday.
Addressing a press conference, Nisar said, “Pakistan’s strategic dialogue with the US is very crucial in which the opposition should have been taken into confidence by the government but, Gilani’s government did not even share the agenda of the strategic dialogue with us.”
“Where are the claims of the government about consensus, reconciliation and democracy?” he asked. Nisar said the PML-N would take up the matter in the upcoming National Assembly and Senate sessions. “They repeatedly talk about consensus, reconciliation and democracy but they are running the affairs of the government in an undemocratic manner,” he said.
Nisar said that the opposition was kept in the dark during former president Pervez Musharraf’s regime and the same norm was being repeated in Prime Minister Gilani’s tenure. The leader of the opposition said the government could have taken the opposition as well as its coalition partners into confidence over the Pak-US strategic dialogue during meetings of the Senate or the National Assembly’s standing committees on defence and foreign affairs.
“At least the opposition should have been briefed on the agenda of the dialogue,” he added. On the Supreme Court’s interim order, Nisar said it was a landmark decision. “After saying a big no to a military dictator, it is the second largest achievement of the Supreme Court,” he averred.
“This SC decision is the practical manifestation of ‘Pakistan First’,” he said. He said the decision on the 18th Amendment would promote and stabilise not only democratic order in the country but also democratic thought in the country.
“Keeping aside its reservations, concerns and interests, the Supreme Court has preferred national interest and this has silenced all those conspirators who were hatching plots of confrontation between the judiciary and the legislature,” he said.
Without naming anyone, he pointed out that some ministers were working on a one-point agenda in the media and that was to castigate, ridicule and allege the superior judiciary to escape the SC decision “but the decision sabotaged their nefarious agenda”.
He said the SC verdict had honoured parliament. Nisar said the Supreme Court had shown dignity and now it was up to every institution of the state to follow suit.