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Thursday March 28, 2024

Treasury, opposition trade barbs in Senate

By Mumtaz Alvi
January 09, 2021

ISLAMABAD: State Minister for Parliamentary Affairs Ali Muhammad Khan told the Senate Friday that the federal cabinet had suggested Prime Minister Imran Khan to visit Quetta and he would go there anytime.

Winding up discussion on the opposition’s agenda item of unprecedented crackdown on political workers, the minister contended that the opposition might talk in Parliament on civil differences or the civil-military imbalance but why to talk like ‘cutting down necks of soldiers and generals’.

Some opposition leaders asked as to why the foreign funding case had made no progress despite passage of six years.

Ali Muhammad said JUI-F chief Fazlur Rehman was patriotic but such voices were raised in his party which must have been hushed up there and then but unfortunately it was not done. He said an ex-prime minister and a ‘ferari’ from Panama case was sitting in a foreign country and asking people to become a stonewall against the armed forces, who were laying down lives every day. When the ex-PM called the army chief by name and criticised him, he defamed the armed forces of his own country, he said.

“You defamed the armed forces. If you had enough courage, you would not have given him extension and launched a drive and agitate here,” he said referring to Nawaz Sharif. “When we attack one another this way, we further widen the fault lines on which the enemy is already working under the fifth generation war,” he maintained.

He insisted that Parliament was the right forum to do political and electoral reforms and invited the opposition to be part of the process.

PkMAP Senator Usman Kakar called for the release of political workers and withdrawal of what he called fake cases against them, saying exercising one’s democratic and political rights was the fundamental right.

Referring to the PDM meetings and the government measures in this connection, he said there was law of the jungle in the country and none bothered about those, who took guns in their hands and subjected peaceful political workers to coercion. This, he said, was bringing a bad name to Pakistan and the Parliament.

JUI-F’s Attaur Rehman said the selected ‘prime minister’ was not going to Quetta because he was not being given the signal, as he himself was a puppet. He urged the Hazara community to bury the martyrs.

Leader of the House Dr. Shahzad Waseem said to criticize the government and agitate was the opposition’s right but there were certain red lines with regard to the state and its institutions, which needed to be respected, as these transgressions might weaken the state.

He said an unprecedented crackdown was carried out by those, who introduced Dalai camps and established FSF and wrote the black chapter of Model Town shootings when even women were shot in their face and old people were dragged on roads and beaten black and blue.

Leader of the Opposition Raja Muhammad Zafarul Haq said hundreds of workers faced cases and arrests were also made. He said days before the PDM meetings, lists were shared with the police stations and arrests were made and force used against political workers.

He claimed that the government contradictions on daily basis were harming the country and then said had Hitler adopted this approach, he would not have met failure.

He alleged that accountability was one-side and against the opposition while the foreign funding case witnessed no progress in six years.

“The negative attitude of the government head is condemnable, as whenever a catastrophe befalls Balochistan, the establishment and the government become indifferent to it and it is evident from the Machh tragedy,” claimed Tahir Bizenjo of the National Party.