Majority candidate to become Senate opposition leader, says Khursheed

ISLAMABAD: Opposition Leader in the National Assembly (NA) Syed Khursheed Shah Thursday said that the person backed by majority will become the opposition leader in the Senate.

He said consultation process for the caretaker set-up for conducting the upcoming general elections was going on but so far no one has forward any name for the caretaker prime minister.

“The government was consulting its allied parries and opposition parties are also doing the same. Once the opposition parties forward nominees for caretaker setup, I will put these names before my party to come up,” he said while talking to newsmen here Thursday along with PPP nominated opposition leader in the Senate Senator Sherry Rehman, PPP Parliamentary Leader in the National Assembly Syed Naveed Qamar and Faisal Karim Kundi. To a question of trend of ‘shoe throwing’ in politics, the opposition leader said he condemned this trend as it is against the political and social culture of the country.

“Those who did not come forward in politics do such things,” he said, adding that the PPP continued to do politics despite bracing bullets.

In a reply to a question regarding the ongoing conflict between the PPP and PTI for getting the office of the opposition leader in the Senate, Shah said the PPP is single largest political party on the opposition benches in the Senate and has a majority. “We neither have any conflict with the PTI nor wanted it as the PPP has a clear majority along with its allies to get the slot of the opposition leader in the Senate,” he said.

To another question about the PPP’s future with the PTI, the opposition leader said the PPP was at the moment reviewing political situation to decide whom to back after the Senate elections. “The PPP wants to move forward along with the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf as it had no contention with the PTI,” he said.

He condemned the incident of terrorist attack in Raiwind and said it was a matter of concern.

On the proposed tax amnesty scheme, Syed Naveed Qamar said amnesty schemes were never proved successful. “Even we also introduced it but never got desired results,” he said. He said it is not understandable why the government was bringing the scheme when the budget was about to be announced.