Disparaging parliament: Imran’s remarks set K-P assembly alight

Opposition lawmakers surround speaker chanting ‘shame, shame’

PESHAWAR: Remarks made last week about parliament by the ruling PTI’s chairman reverberated in the provincial assembly on Monday.

At a rally in Lahore last week, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Chairman Imran Khan had cursed the current parliament that “has violated very basic principles of democracy by voting in support of the corrupt Sharifs”. Imran’s ally, Awami Muslim League (AML) chief Sheikh Rasheed had announced to resign from parliament in the same rally.



There was an uproar in the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Assembly on Monday as PTI lawmakers not only endorsed the views of their party chairman but also repeated the remarks.

“Why should we not curse the parliament which passes a bill to change Khatam-e-Nabuwwat clauses and qualify a disqualified person?” asked PTI lawmaker from Kohistan Zargul Khan, while endorsing Imran’s statement.

These remarks infuriated lawmakers from the opposition benches who demanded that Zargul apologise.

Zargul, though, stuck to his remarks. Speaker Asad Qaiser, thought that it was only prudent that Zargul’s remarks be expunged from the assembly’s record, but not before he found himself encircled by angry opposition lawmakers raising slogans of “shame, shame”.

The PTI lawmaker’s inflammatory remarks came on a point raised by PML-N parliamentary leader in the house Sardar Aurangzeb Nalota who had demanded that the speaker allow him to table a resolution in the house condemning Imran’s remarks.

“The parliament is the supreme institution of the country and it is our responsibility to protect its dignity,” Nalota had argued.

Bills

Earlier, Speaker Qaiser had suspended the question hour to complete items listed on the day’s agenda.

The assembly passed the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Building (Management, Control and Allotment) Act 2018, to manage, control and cancel government-owned and rented buildings including houses, offices, rest houses, mess, residential accommodations and circuit houses in the province.

The house, though, deferred the K-P Employees (Regularisation of Services) Bill 2018, through which the government plans to regularise the services of around 5,000 contract and ad hoc employees hired across the province in various projects and programmes.



The bill had been tabled in the house but PPP lawmaker Sardar Fakhr Azam Wazir and QWP lawmaker Anisa Zeb Tahirkheli demanded a thorough analysis of the bill rather than passing it in haste since it deals with the future of thousands of government employees.

The speaker concurred with their suggestions and deferred the bill for some other day.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 23^rd, 2018.