PPP stages sit-in against permission to Musharraf to go abroad

KARACHI: Wearing black arm-bands and holding placards, lawmakers of the ruling Pakistan People’s Party in the Sindh Assembly, including the provincial ministers, on Monday staged a protest sit-in at the provincial assembly’s building against the PML-N government’s move to allow former military ruler Pervez Musharraf to leave the country without facing trials being conducted against him.

The ruling lawmakers vociferously shouted slogans “Go Nawaz Go”, “Jo Musharraf Ka Yar Hai Wo Ghaddar Hai Ghaddar Hai” (one who befriends with Musharraf is a traitor), and in favour of the PPP leaders Asif Ali Zardari and Bilawal Bhutto Zardari.

The protest sit-in was staged at the steps at the entrance to the old historical building of Sindh Assembly in the afternoon after Sindh Assembly’s session was adjourned till Tuesday. Earlier when the Sindh Assembly commenced its new session, it was being expected that the PPP’s treasury members in the House would move a motion or resolution against the act of the federal government allowing the former president Pervez Musharraf to leave the country, but the ruling party desisted from any such move inside the House.

During the protest sit-in, a newsman asked Sindh Senior Minister for Education and Parliamentary Affairs Nisar Ahmed Khuhro why no resolution was moved in the House against the decision of the federal government in favour of the former military ruler. Nisar Khuhro said that his party had exercised the option of taking its protest on the issue to the streets to make it public as the masses were the ultimate arbiters in such matters.

Meanwhile, speaking at the protest sit-in, Khuhro said that the federal government had itself made an act of high-treason by acting as a facilitator in granting permission to Pervez Musharraf to leave the country despite the fact that the former ruler had violated the Constitution.

He said that an anti-Nawaz Sharif movement would soon be launched in every nook and corner of the city if the federal government failed to get Pervez Musharraf repatriated to the country immediately. Nisar Khuhro said that the Pakistan People’s Party had never entered into any sort of agreement with the regime of 

Pervez Musharraf for getting the National Reconciliation Ordinance promulgated at that time as no one could produce any documentary evidence showing that the PPP had signed any accord with the former ruler.