The PPP-dominated Sindh Assembly is all set to disqualify today (Thursday) the self-exiled leader of Pakistan Muslim League-Quaid (Likeminded group), Dr Arbab Ghulam Rahim, due to his prolonged absence from the provincial legislature. The former Sindh chief minister, considered an archrival of the PPP in Sindh, is facing de-seating under sub-section 1 of Clause 56, Chapter VIII of the Rules of Procedure of Sindh Assembly.
“If a member remains absent, without leave of the assembly, for 40 consecutive days of its sitting, the speaker shall bring the fact to the notice of the assembly and thereupon any member may move that the seat of the member who has been o absent be declared vacant,” states the rule. While the PPP lawmakers hinted Thursday as the day of disqualification for Rahim, their counterparts from the PML-Likeminded confirmed the same to Pakistan Today.
“They are planning to de-seat Rahim tomorrow (Thursday) and that’s why have called the assembly session on the 103rd day,” said PML-Likeminded leader Abdul Razzak Rahimoon. He said that last year on June 26, the house had granted leave to Rahim, who is living in Dubai, United Arab Emirates for the past four years. “The 40-day absence required [for disqualification] have completed,” he conceded. The lawmaker, however, disagreed with Sindh Information Minister Shazia Marri’s contention that Rahim was being dealt with in the light of assembly rules.
Rahimoon questioned that if this was the case, why was the PPP not applying the same rules on its own members, Ruqayya Soomro and a Hindu lawmaker doing business in Dubai, who have been absent from the house for long. “It was only before the Senate polls when they submitted a leave application for an ailing Soomro,” he claimed.
The Likeminded leader went on to claim that his party, despite being in power during the previous Musharraf regime, never questioned the attendance of PPP’s Marvi Mazhar, the daughter of senior education minister Pir Mazharul Haq. “She never came to the house but we still accommodated,” he said.
“This is nothing but political victimisation on the part of PPP, which is the only party having a long history of disqualifying lawmakers,” he alleged. “In the past, they disqualified Jam Madad Ali of PML-Functional during the reign of Abdullah Shah in 1995 and now it’s Rahim’s turn.”
Rahimoon perceived that the former Sindh chief minister was facing the all-powerful PPP’s wrath for contesting the recent Senate polls, denying the coalition government from sweeping the elections uncontested. “They felt insulted by our participation in the Senate election,” he claimed.
Marri, however, said it was not her party but the legislature that would decide the fate of ex-chief minister. “It is the house that decides not a party,” the information minister told Pakistan Today. Speaking at a post-session briefing, she had said that the leave applications being submitted by Rahim were self-contradictory. “While some applications cite security reasons for his absence, others cite illness,” she added.
To her comments, Rahimoon accused the PPP of never having bothered to quote reasons on its own members’ leave applications. “We would go to the court and even if that doesn’t work, we would contest the by-polls on the vacant seat,” he added.
It serves to right to this man who was nothing but Musharraf and MQM henchmen. No one will shed tears if he is thrown out of the provincial assembly.
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