After having faced contempt charges in the Supreme Court with a resolve to not plead guilty, when Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani appeared in the National Assembly on Monday, the treasury members welcomed him with unusual bench-thumping as if he had returned victorious from the battlefield.
He wore a triumphant smile on his face with apparently no regrets even if it cost him his political career.
Even some opposition members including PPP-Sherpao chief Aftab Ahmed Khan Sherpao, and PML-N members Abid Sher Ali and Mohammed Berjees Tahir went to Gilani to express solidarity with him.
Sherpao also spoke on a point of order and expressed solidarity with the premier. Though almost every legislator of the PPP and the PML-Q went to Gilani and shook hands with him, no member of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) expressed solidarity with Gilani, in line with the party’s decision not to accompany him to the SC hearing which might annoy the superior judiciary.
It was only Railways Minister Ghulam Ahmed Bilour from the Awami National Party (ANP) who met the prime minister on the occasion.
