ISLAMABAD: Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) Secretary-General Ahsan Iqbal led a series of chants during the National Assembly (NA) session on Wednesday, leaving Minister for Law Farogh Naseem unable to read out the contents of the bill due to the loud protests.
Moreover, Iqbal also accused Speaker Asad Qaiser of being biased and not letting the opposition speak, stating that “it seems the opposition has been labelled pariahs in the parliament”.
He said that a speaker is not supposed to favour any party during the noisy NA session on Wednesday, during which the speaker wanted the parliamentarians to discuss the constitutional amendment bill.
A bill to bring the 26th amendment to the Constitution, to pave the way for open balloting in Senate elections, was presented during Wednesday’s session, and members of the opposition protested loudly in an attempt to prevent the law minister from reading out the contents of the bill.
In his remarks earlier, Naseem said that the Senate elections should be held through open ballot. “We are amending the Constitution, not stealing the election,” he added while responding to the opposition’s criticism.
Due to the ruckus, Qaiser called a recess, and the session was then taken over by Deputy Speaker Qasim Suri. Iqbal, at this time, accused Qaiser of not allowing the opposition to voice their opinions.
“The chair purposely ignores PML-N’s calling attention notices and adjournment motions,” he alleged, saying that his party wanted to debate the rise in the prices of electricity and petrol, the LNG issue and wheat and sugar scandals but wasn’t allowed to.
Iqbal said that “at present, the prices of flour, sugar and essential commodities are skyrocketing”. He also spoke of aviation industry “coming to a standstill” and “lies told in the House of the licences of 850 pilots being fake”.
“Our airline was barred by US and Europe […] Pakistan Steel Mills employees are being fired,” he said, in further criticism of the government.
“Whenever we stand up, our mics are turned off,” Iqbal said. “This is not the PTI’s [Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf] assembly, this is the National Assembly of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan.”
Iqbal claimed that while this matter had been in discussion for nearly two weeks, merely 10 hours of actual discourse had taken place.
“Democracy does not work like you are angels and the opposition is the devil,” he added. Furthermore, he claimed the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) was being using in “revenge” tactics.
He said that the government members subjected PML-N’s Khawaja Asif, who was arrested by NAB late last year, to “character assassination” and “media trial” regularly, but despite this, the court had sent him on judicial remand because it was “confused” by the evidence presented against him.
Iqbal claimed that during the PML-N era, opposition members were allowed to speak for even two hours nonstop.
In response, Speaker Qaiser said that he accepts the challenge posed by the PML-N leader, and asked Iqbal to verify how many notices motions submitted by PML-N had been taken up. He further claimed that he acted on merit and ran the lower house in accordance with the law.
To this, Iqbal turned to his fellow party members and asked if they felt Qasier was in the right, to which a chant of “No!” began.
Regarding the bill, PML-N’s Iqbal claimed that the government had gotten the amendment bill passed through the relevant standing committee “in 20 minutes” and further said that his party “strongly opposes” the amendment bill.
“We will not allow the government to bulldoze the Constitution.”
Moreover, Iqbal claimed that Prime Minister Imran Khan was only seeking an open ballot as he did not trust the members of his own party.
“At that time horse-trading was being done from Prime Minister House [according to Imran] but now that he is afraid his own members will not vote [for the PTI], he has suddenly remembered transparency,” the PML-N leader alleged.
The opposition’s loud protests gained further momentum during Minister for Communications and Postal Services Murad Saeed’s address.
“The opposition is not allowing me to speak because they know what I have to say,” Saeed said.
“Just as their leaders are thieves, so are these people,” he said.
Saeed stated the opposition had wanted to drive the sitting premier out by January 31, but the PTI was still here. He further said that the leader of the PML-N, Nawaz Sharif, was sitting in London while poisoning people’s ears against the state.
Saeed said that the government wants open ballot in Senate, but the opposition wants “Changa Manga politics”.
“People want that elections be sold again, the Senate be sold again, consciences be sold again and a vote market be set up. If this is not the case, there is only one way, and that is to have this amendment to the Constitution,” Adviser to the Prime Minister on Parliamentary Affairs Dr Babar Awan said on the occasion.
The adviser also informed the session that the amendments would allow dual nationals to hold office. He added that the proposed bill stated that dual nationals could not be left “remedy-less” by asking them to first renounce their second nationality before contesting the elections in Pakistan.
In this regard, Iqbal continued to attack the PTI, claiming that the government was misleading overseas Pakistanis because it “wants to bring dual nationals” in its ranks to the Senate.
He accused PM Imran of attempting to bring his friends into office and said this was not a reason to change the Constitution.
Meanwhile, former prime minister and Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) leader Raja Pervez Ashraf alleged that the government did not have the numbers to affect the amendment and “on top of that this is their behaviour”.
He said that the PPP had brought about the 18th Amendment by taking all stakeholders on board and using a parliamentary committee to create consensus, adding that the PTI intended to enact its amendments with “ill-intent” and “shrewdness”.
“How can these naive [people] do an amendment? They don’t even understand the parliament.”
Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-Fazl (JUI-F) leader Asad Mehmood alleged that the government was desecrating the sanctity of the vote and questioned: “If you want to bring election reforms then why only on one note?”
Mehmood said that his party would not accept any amendment such as this “through the back door”.
Speaking on the occasion, Foreign Minister and PTI senior leader Shah Mehmood Qureshi clarified that the incumbent government did not want to silence the opposition, but advised them to return the kindness and let the PTI speak, as this was an important amendment and needed due discourse.
“Historical traditions have been ingrained which are not grounds to be proud of; if we can move towards a transparent way [of elections] from them and the fingers that have been raised can be lowered then we are ready for this,” he said.
PTI INTENDS TRANSPARENCY IN SENATE POLLS:
While substantiating the presidential reference before the Supreme Court (SC) for an open ballot in upcoming Senate elections, the federation’s chief law officer had contended that instead of tabling an amendment to election laws, the government has preferred to seek guidelines of the court for the reason to avoid legal issues afterwards.
Commencing arguments before a five-member larger bench, headed by Chief Justice of Pakistan (CJP) Gulzar Ahmed, the Attorney General for Pakistan (AGP) Khalid Javed Khan on Tuesday had expressed, for the sake of transparency in the electoral process, the government intended to seek open ballot in Senate election submitting that seeking open ballot has nothing to do with maligning politicians.
“It is the right of the people to know, to whom their elected member is voting – People not voting to a candidate but they vote for a party,” Khalid Javed Khan had contended.
During the course of proceedings Chief Justice Gulzar had observed, “If opposition parties don’t want to change the existing electoral procedure, it means they are not intending to halt trading of votes”.
A member of the bench Justice Ijazul Ahsan had questioned whether or not it was against the law if any legislature cast a vote against the party line, explaining that it would be a crime if it proves that a member has sold his/her vote.
Justice Ahsan had inquired to the AGP as to what the logic was behind secrecy in the Senate polls if a member was interested in voting according to his or her conscience.
Another learned member of the bench Justice Umar Ata Bandial raised a question as to why secret ballot in Senate polls was not changed when the 18th Constitutional Amendment changed many things.
Later, the bench adjourned the hearing of the matter till February 4.
With additional input from TLTP
