ISLAMABAD: The senators from both treasury and opposition benches on Thursday demanded setting up a judicial or parliamentary commission to probe the reasons behind the sit-in at Faizabad by a religious party Tehreek Labbaik Ya Rasool Allah (TLYR).
Participating in a debate on an adjournment motion, moved by Farhatullah Babar, Saeedul Hassan Mandokhail and Sehar Kamran, they lamented the language used by the leaders of the sit-in.
Calling for the judicial probe of the Faizabad protest, Senator Farhatullah Babar said that the protest culminated in a one-page ‘national document of surrender’ that set up a dangerous precedent to hold the state and society hostage by a gun and stick-wielding mob of a few hundred.
On that day, something profound happened and Pakistan ceased to be the country that it was previously, he expressed.
“The state surrender on November 25 before the mob will only give additional impetus to our adversaries to claim that Pakistan’s nuclear assets are unsafe and can be hijacked by only a few thousand armed people,” he said.
Farhatullah Babar said that the stage for surrender was set by the statement on the eve of the Faizabad operation that seemed to equate the legitimately elected government with the stick-wielding unruly mob engaged in a ‘legitimate’ contest. By calling for no violence from either side, equal legitimacy was conferred on legal state institutions and the mob, he added.
It is inconceivable to engage in an operation like Raddul Fasaad without the state using violence, the senator said.
“The question, therefore, is whether we accept defeat for all the times, or we take it as one of the low points in our history, overcome it, and move on!” the senator said.
He went on to say that “it needs to be probed as to how the protesters came all the way from Lahore unhindered; how they were sustained for three weeks; who negotiated the terms of surrender and why some appeared to be rewarded with cash at the end of the sit-in”.
It also needs to be investigated whether it was an isolated incident, or the strange events of the past weeks in Karachi, Islamabad, Faizabad and in Lahore were interconnected in some ways, he added.
He also paid glowing tributes to the policemen who were dispatched to the sit-in to disperse it without using force. “They carried out non-implementable orders at the peril of their lives and are the nation’s heroes,” he said and lamented that the state and society, instead of honouring had ditched them.
Farhatullah Babar further said that a resolution should be adopted in the house to pay tributes to brave policemen who participated in the operation on November 25.
Senator Sehar Kamran said that seven people were killed during the Faizabad operation. “The government should have summoned the joint-session of the parliament for holding a debate to find a way out of the sit-in,” she added.
Senator Azam Khan Swati said that “a firm belief in Khatam-e-Nabuwwat was more precious than our lives”. Had the government resolved the issue earlier, such ugly situation would never have emerged, he added.
Senator Usman Khan Kakar said that nobody bothered to stop the workers of the religious party right when they departed from Lahore.
Senator Saud Majeed said that the parties involved in de-stabilising the democracy should be pinpointed, besides exposing the hidden agenda of the vested interests.
Senator Brig (retd) John Kenneth Williams praised the services of Pakistan Army in saving the country by brokering a deal with the religious party’s mob to end Faizabad sit in.
Nehal Hashmi said that Nawaz Sharif’s ouster destabilised the country’s economy. He urged that the duty hours of Islamabad Police should be minimised and the culture of sit-ins should be discouraged.
