As the largest opposition party, the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) is determined to give the nation good news and sees no impediments in the implementation of the resolution adopted by the joint session of parliament on Friday, while other political parties seemed to vary as far as the level of hope and modus operandi for the implementation is concerned. PML-N Senator Pervez Rashid told Pakistan Today he hoped that the leader of the house and leader of the opposition could agree on retired judges, leaders of the lawyers’ movement and members of the civil society to appoint to an independent commission on the Abbottabad incident.
“As far as our party is concerned, we are determined to give the nation good news from the political front by implementing the resolution. The issue cannot linger on and we are hopeful that the resolution will be implemented,” he said. He said the 14-point resolution passed by a joint session of parliament in 2008 could not be implemented either, and added that much could be achieved if it was. Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-Fazl Senator Khalid Soomro called the resolution a good step but feared that the government would not implement it in letter and spirit. “The government will try to avoid its implementation,” he said. He said his party was considering holding an all-parties conference to formulate a strategy on how the resolution could be implemented.
Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) Senator Professor Khurshid Ahmad said: “Though the government has assured that it will appoint the commission soon, we are afraid that the commission’s formation might be delayed as consensus between the leader of the house and the leader of the opposition on the definition of ‘independent commission’ is unlikely if they keep on interpreting the commission along judicial and administrative lines.” He added, however, that his party would press the government hard to form the commission as quickly as possible. The Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) said that it would not support any commission if parliamentarians were not included in it and it was not given complete independence.
“Parliamentary representation is essential in any commission constituted to probe issues of national significance,” Senator Abdul Khaliq Pirzada said, adding that MQM parliamentary leader Dr Farooq Sattar had also demanded this in his speech in the in-camera parliament session on Friday.
