‘If all else fails, PML-N may quit parliament’

Nawaz calls for independent panel to probe PNS Mehran attack.

ISLAMABAD:

The Pakistan Muslim League-N chief Nawaz Sharif said on Thursday his party might consider resigning from parliament to build up pressure on what he termed a ‘discredited’ government, but after exhausting all other options.

“We are ready for (rendering) every sacrifice for upholding the sanctity of parliament,” Sharif told reporters at a press conference in response to a question whether resignation was one of the options the party was considering to dislodge the government.“All options are open,” he added.

Insiders say the PML-N is planning to gear up what could ultimately be a movement to seek snap polls ahead of Senate elections next year in March.

“We discussed that option in today’s meeting. But this will be the last of our choices,” said a party leader, who attended the meeting.

Sharif rejected suggestions that his party was not prepared for polls at this stage, and was shying away from seeking fresh elections. “We are also ready to cope with all kinds of situations.”

Blasting the government for constituting an ‘independent commission’ to probe the Abbottabad incursion without consulting the opposition parties, Nawaz Sharif said, “It is a unilateral commission for which the prime minister did not even consult the leader of the opposition (in the National Assembly),” he said.

Warning the government that the PML-N would not tolerate the government’s approach of undermining parliament’s supremacy, he said that the unanimous resolution had been passed by parliament after hectic negotiations during the secret session and it had authorised leader of the house and leader of the opposition to form the commission in consultation with each other.

“They should have consulted about its composition, terms of reference and modalities,” he said.

Sharif added that the government even failed to consult people who were inducted as members of the commission.

He said that the party had decided to urge the government to form “an independent commission to probe the PNS Mehran attack and the killing of journalist Saleem Shehzad”.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 3^rd, 2011.