ISLAMABAD – The Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) leaders claim that the party is playing the role of a real opposition and are not hand-in-glove with the PPP government. Its actions speak otherwise. Case in point is the party’s recently-aborted plan of releasing white paper on the government’s three-year performance.
The PML-N has not only withheld a caustic white paper on the government’s wrongdoings and failures but has also backtracked from its public stances to save the PPP-led government from embarrassment and political loss at numerous occasions in the last two years.
In the last week of March, reliable sources in the PML-N told Pakistan Today that the party had prepared a white paper on the government’s three-year performance but no such paper has been released until today, apparently to avoid displeasure of the PPP leadership.
Pakistan Today also published a story on March 27 on contents of soon-to-be-released white paper but no one from the party rebutted the report. In the white paper, the PML-N had blamed the PPP for toeing former president Pervez Musharraf’s marks and had also said that the country was being run by the troika of the president, the prime minister and the chief of army staff and not by the people-elected parliament.
It is not the first time that the PML-N has shelved its plan of exposing the government’s wrongdoings and failures. It had prepared similar material in October last year but did not bring that fact sheet to light either. A source in the PML-N said the party had binned the fact sheet on the request of PPP leaders in October 2010.
Pakistan Today had also published a story on the possible release of the PML-N’s fact sheet on government’s 30-months performance after taking affirmative version from Senator Pervaiz Rashid. Similarly, the PML-N also failed to release any white paper on the reinstated employees as announced by Opposition Leader in the National Assembly Nisar Ali Khan in October 2010.
After staging a boycott of the National Assembly session which passed “The Sacked Employees (Reinstatement) Bill, 2010,” to provide relief to those who were appointed in corporations or autonomous or semi-autonomous bodies or in government service from November 1, 1993 to November 30, 1996 and were dismissed, removed, terminated from service or forcibly offered golden handshake from November 1, 1996 to October 12, 1999, Nisar had said the PML-N had no objection to the reinstatement of the sacked employees but had objections on the procedure of the reinstatement, adding that the PPP was just reinstating its parties jialas.
He had said with the reinstatement of sacked employees the national exchequer would have to bear an extra burden of RS 21 billion. In another similar case in which the PML-N back paddled from its announcement is the demand of General (r) Musharraf’s trial for high treason.
Demanding the PPP government try Musharraf for high treason in 2009, the PML-N’s hawks had also announced that their party would move a resolution in parliament for Musharraf’s trial under Article 6 but the said resolution could not be moved in the House despite bitter taunts from the treasury benches.
