Neither the PM nor the PTI chief have taken practical steps to curb the aggressive mindsets in their party ranks
LARKANA: This refers to the letter, “Scuffle in National Assembly” by Aamir Aqil (January 29). I beg to differ with the content of the letter. It is difficult to teach shame to the shameless. The departure of decency witnessed on January 26 during the National Assembly proceeding sent chills down our spines as we could not believe our eyes over the transformation of some elected representatives into a mob. However, such a scuffle on the assembly floor does not characterise our national character. The violence and acts of intolerance by some lawmakers can never be justified as our nation being illiterate and intolerant all over the globe and the country being dangerous as the writer has disparagingly written.
Pakistan is not the only country whose Parliament has seen such incidence of violence within its House of Parliament. In 2015, the Ukraine Parliament turned into a fight club when legislator Oleh Barna physically dragged Ukrainian Prime Minister Arsenity Yatsenity Yatsenyuk from the Speaker’s podium. In September 2015, politicians in Japan’s upper house scuffled as they tried unsuccessfully to stop a security bill that paved the way for Japan’s military to fight abroad for the first time since World War II. Importantly, the condemnatory material published in the national newspapers against the scuffle in question also gives the message that those who violated the sanctity of Parliament are being severely criticised by the people of Pakistan.
If the PM or Imran Khan had been there, the situation would not have been different. It is the longstanding political bitterness and aggression that resulted in members physically assaulting one another. Neither the PM nor the PTI chief have taken practical steps to curb the intolerant and aggressive mindsets in their party ranks. The routine warfare outside Parliament and their leadership’s silence over unparliamentary tones and tenors shaped lawmakers’ fall from grace and left the people of Pakistan and the world in a daze. It is this immaturity of the political class that has tarnished the image of our dear homeland. To expect the speaker of the National Assembly will take the culpable lawmakers to task is barking up the wrong tree as the custodian of the house has failed miserably in the discharge of his duty, running the house with due neutrality. One wishes the parliamentarians in question rise above party politics and shape up or ship out.
Nazeer Ahmed Arijo
Published in The Express Tribune, February 3rd, 2017.
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