News
Friday, April 29, 2011
PPP, PML-N trade barbs in National Assembly
* PPP terms PML-N walkout from jointing sitting of parliament against parliamentary norms
* PML-N says govt has miserably failed to come up to people’s expectations
By Tanveer Ahmed
ISLAMABAD: Debate on the presidential address in the Lower House of parliament continued on Thursday with members from both sides of the political divide actively expressing their views on the address.
The current session of the House saw the highest number of speakers so far, speaking their mind on President Asif Ali Zardari’s address to the joint sitting of parliament on March 22, 2011.
The heated and fiery speeches from the treasury and opposition benches kept the atmosphere charged in the House with a strong desk thumping from both the sides.
Though various members spoke on the address but the day belonged to PPP’s MNA Imtiaz Safdar Warriach, and PML-N’s firebrand speaker Khawaja Saad Rafiq, both of whom resorted to mudslinging and levelled strong criticism against each other’s party leaderships.
At the outset of his speech, Warriach called the PML-N’s walkout from the joint sitting of parliament on the occasion of the presidential address undemocratic and against the parliamentary norms.
Referring to the opposition’s criticism to the National Reconciliation Ordinance (NRO), Warraich said that it was aimed at restoring democracy in the country and masses gave the verdict in its favour when hundreds of thousands of people assembled in Karachi to
welcome the late PPP chairperson Benazir Bhutto upon her return to the country after spending many years abroad.
“If opposition targets NRO, then what will they say about another NRO which their leadership signed with General Musharraf and fled the country in the dark of night?” he questioned.
He also brushed aside criticism against Zardari for allegedly being corrupt, saying cases against the president were framed by an accountability bureau during the tenure of PML-N leader Nawaz Sharif.
“These cases were bogus, and it has been confessed even by Nawaz Sharif that the PPP’s leadership was implicated in these cases under the pressure from certain quarters,” Warriach said referring to Nawaz’s interview.
About the reference filed in the apex court about Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto’s case and the opposition’s objections to it, the PPP leader said that if Mian brothers’ convictions could be pardoned after ten years, then why the opposition had any problem with correcting the historical wrong in judicial history of the country.
He advised the PML-N to listen to the advice of its leader Javed Hashmi, asking Nawaz to seek apology from masses for joining hands with dictators and making deals with them.
Khawaja Saad Rafiq, taking the floor immediately after Imtiaz Warriach, said that the government should correct its attitude instead of demanding an apology from others.
Saad said that this was not the democracy for which people of Pakistan gave sacrifices, as the present government had disappointed the people quite badly. “What to talk about resolving problems of people, when this government cannot even determine the direction the country has to take to get rid of its present predicament,” he lamented.
Pointing towards Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani, who was present in the House, Saad said that Gilani, being the chief executive of the country, was totally different from the one whom he met in Adiala Jail during General Musharraf’s regime.
Saad said that high expectations pinned on the present government culminated in sheer failure, as the people around Musharraf managed to sneak into the ranks of the incumbent government and even non-political figures were now at the helm of important ministries, an apparent reference to Interior Minister Rehman Malik.
PML-N’s Zahid Hamid, in his speech, criticised the government for fanning provincialism in the aftermath of the verdict of a high judiciary. PPP’s Gul Muhammad Jahkhrani said that judiciary and other state institutions should refrain from targeting the PPP’s leadership belonging to Sindh, as people were frequently asking in Sindh that why judiciary had become Zardari-specific.
PPP’s Farah Naz Asphani, Akhunzada Chattan, MQM’s Sheikh Salauddin, PML-Q Humayun Saifullah and Shahzada Mohidduin also spoke.
Courtesy www.dailytimes.com.pk