Minister for Information and Broadcasting Pervaiz Rashid said on Sunday that the participation of Pakistan Tehreek -e -Insaf (PTI) in Speaker’s elections proved their acceptance of NA-122 by-poll results.
Talking to a private TV channel he said the government of Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) wanted to serve the country in collaboration with other political forces but unfortunately a peculiar mindset considered politics of confrontation, use of indecent language and leveling baseless allegations at every turn as ‘opposition’. Such mindset did not let the process of reconciliation succeed which harmed the country’s interest, he added.
He was responding to PTI’s candidate for the Speaker’s slot Shafqat Mehmood’s allegations that all the political parties in the country except for PTI were engaged in politics of ‘muk muka’. Mehmood said PTI wanted to be an effective opposition party in the country.
The information minister said that Sardar Ayaz Sadiq was a consensus candidate of almost all parliamentary parties.
He said that Sardar Ayaz Sadiq had run National Assembly with dignity and impartiality in his first tenure. He said that other political parties acknowledged this fact which was why Sadiq was the consensus candidate of so many political parties.
Pervaiz said that Ayaz Sadiq had not accepted the resignation of those who used abusive language adding the former speaker dealt the matter of resignations of PTI and MQM legislators in a democratic and lawful way.
When asked if he could tell how many votes Sadiq would get in Monday’s election, Rashid said he could not give a figure but that the PTI candidate may not even get the votes of all of the PTI parliamentarians. He said that it was widely being considered that Ayaz Sadiq would be elected to the National Assembly Speaker’s position with a thumping majority.
The minister said that contesting the election of speaker was a democratic right of PTI’s candidate Shafqat Mehmood.
He said that the ruling party had accepted the mandate of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa with open heart and of other political parties in Sindh and Balochistan. PML-N did not create any hurdles during the process to form provincial governments, he said adding that PML-N respected other parties’ mandate in different provinces of the country in the 2013 elections.
He urged the political parties to forget their petty issues, shun politics of confrontation as reconciliation was not possible in such an atmosphere.
