ISLAMABAD – The opposition parties have decided that they will give a tough time to the government for disobeying verdicts of superior court in the future, Leader of the Opposition in the National Assembly Nisar Ali Khan said on Tuesday.
Nisar said all opposition parties would also pressurise the government to clarify its position regarding drone attacks in the coming NA and Senate sessions. He demanded formation of a high-level judicial or a parliamentary commission to probe the release of Raymond Davis to bring the faces of those responsible to light.
“This commission should probe the Punjab government, the federal government, other sensitive institution and the judge who gave the verdict in the Davis case so that the nation can find out about those behind Davis’ release,” Nisar said. He said the demand for the formation of the commission was one of those points on which the opposition parties including the JUI-F, the PPP-Sherpao and the PML Likeminded had agreed with the PML-N in a joint parliamentary party meeting.
He said the PML-N had decided to protest during the president’s address but later toned down its stance to develop consensus with other political parties “and we (opposition parties) decided to stage a walk out after raising five points in a points of order”.He said he was sharing those points with the media as he was not allowed by the speaker to speak on a point of order in the House.
Sharing the other four points, Nisar said President Asif Ali Zadari had robbed parliament’s authority by promulgating an ordinance to impose Rs 53 billion in taxes. “Those PPP, ANP and MQM lawmakers who were thumping desks during the president’s speech should have in fact condemned his act of imposing taxes by bypassing parliament,” he said.
Nisar said the government had failed to check targeted killings in Balochistan and Karachi. “The coalition partners including the PPP, the MQM and the ANP are just passing buck to one another in Karachi,” he said. On Raymond Davis’ release, the opposition leader said parties which had no representation in parliament on behest of the establishment were misguiding masses on the Davis issue and were wrongly involving the PML-N government in Punjab in the issue.
“I totally negate all such impressions and accusations,” he said. He said President Zardari had addressed parliament as a leader of the PPP not as the president of Pakistan as around 48 percent of parliamentarians were absent from the House. To a query about the Punjab government’s incompetence in case of Faheem, Faizan’s heirs disappearance, he said, “All of us know how security agencies used to make disappear people in the past.”
