The Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) is the biggest hurdle in the way of new accountability legislation and in the appointment of a chairman for the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) because it does not want to see a fair accountability commission, former federal law minister Babar Awan said on Sunday.
He said that PML-N was raising non-issues such as the formation of an independent election commission.
He said that the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) was committed towards the formation of an independent commission to investigate the May 2 Abbottabad incident and it had already started consulting on the names of members for the commission, adding that the PML-N list showed heavy bias toward just one party.
Reminding his audience that PML-N had looked towards the US in both Aimal Kansi’s case and the Kargil debacle, Awan said that it was PPP which had “brought national security institutions before parliament, proving its supremacy”.
Criticising top PML-N leaders, he said party chief Nawaz Sharif had not bothered to contest elections for the past three years and his younger brother, who is the chief executive of Punjab, had not bothered to come to the Punjab Assembly for the past six months.
Inviting Nawaz to contest elections, Awan said the PPP would support him. He said that election would not only debunk the myth of his “popularity” but might also provide him a chance to enter parliament.
Criticising the Punjab government’s decision to forego foreign aid, he said that he hoped Shahbaz had not made the decision without considering all pros and cons, adding that he should have taken a collective decision in the provincial assembly, instead of making a unilateral one at his residence.
Published in The Express Tribune, May 23rd, 2011.
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