ISLAMABAD – Rumpus marred the National Assembly proceedings on Wednesday as the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) and the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) parliamentarians locked horns, chanted slogans and accused each other of striking deals for political gains, while the PML-Q reprimanded both for ignoring the agenda of the House and washing their dirty linen at taxpayers’ expense.
Visibly perturbed over the developments vis-a-vis the formation of a national government that might land it in political wilderness, the PML-N went berserk and for the first time, its parliamentarians raised full-throated slogans against the president. “Zardari ka jo yaar hay ghadaar hay, ghadaar hay,” they shouted.
Initially, it was none other than opposition leader Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan who launched his criticism over the PPP government on a point of order, accusing it of adopting a policy of hypocrisy. “Now a new NRO is being introduced … the former was also aimed at saving someone while the new one is also to save someone … the nation is witnessing the drama being staged in the FIA … but the rulers should know that it cannot get strength from any NRO and rather this House can give strength to the government … the government should inform the House what mandate was given to the ISI DG on his recent visit to the US,” he said amid sloganeering from his party legislators.
Following his speech, Nisar left the House and during his absence, PML-N MNAs raised slogans and later moved to the rear to stage a walkout. But as they moved out, some PPP legislators responded in kind, making the PML-N leaders stop at the door and chant anti-Zardari and anti-US slogans. The exchange of slogans continued until the PPP MPs were abandoned by Religious Affairs Minister Syed Khurshid Shah and the PML-N members eventually walked out.
Responding to the points raised by Nisar in his absence, Shah warned the PML-N legislators not to take the political process back to the confrontational era of 1980s and 1990s, which he said would only destabilise the political process. He said it was against democratic norms to castigate the president who was elected by parliament and represented the federation.
He also asked the PML-N not to criticise the US to whom the PML-N leadership had consulted for guaranteeing their release from the dictator under a deal. Shah claimed that the government and the army were one on the issue of drone attacks. Nisar again responded to the points raised by Shah and called for a code of conduct for parliamentary business.
However, he stuck to his guns on the NRO issue, saying the Charter of Democracy (CoD) was violated by striking an underhand deal with General (r) Pervez Musharraf by the PPP leadership. This made former information minister Qamar Zaman Kaira respond to the allegations levelled by Nisar. He said it was not his leadership who had breached the CoD, but it was PML-N chief Nawaz Sharif who despite joining the Alliance for the Restoration of Democracy (ARD) had left the country under a secret deal with Musharraf.
He also referred to the agreements between the PPP and PML-N in Bhurban, Islamabad and Murree, saying his party had not breached any of those. After Kaira, it was Khwaja Muhammad Asif who turned tables on the PPP leaders, saying he knew all the details of the dialogues between the PML-N and PPP leadership.
