Shehbaz raises questions on NA speaker's neutrality

PML-N president says Qaiser 'heavily tilted' in favour of PTI

National Assembly Opposition Leader and Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) President Shehbaz Sharif on Sunday expressed reservations over the impartiality of National Assembly Speaker Asad Qaiser.

NA Speaker is custodian of the House, a role which requires him to be neutral & above party affiliation. Given his conduct & statements, Asad Qaiser has come across as partisan & heavily tilted in favor of PTI. There is a huge question mark on his role & probity.

— Shehbaz Sharif (@CMShehbaz) March 13, 2022

In a tweet, the PML-N president said: "Given his conduct and statements, Asad Qaiser has come across as partisan and heavily tilted in favour of [the] PTI." Shehbaz said his behaviour had raised a "huge question mark on his role and probity".

A day earlier, sources said with the likely success of the motion of no-confidence against Premier Imran Khan, the motion against the speaker and deputy speaker of the NA will be submitted.

On Saturday, the opposition leaders criticised Speaker Qaiser over what they termed was his “blatant partisanship” in handling the no-confidence motion, asking the latter to step down from his position or call an immediate session of the lower house.

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Sounding alarms over Qaiser’s terming of the opposition’s no-trust motion a “foreign conspiracy”, both main opposition parties –the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) and PML-N – had said the speaker had failed to discharge his duty as a custodian of the house by showing explicit leanings towards the ruling party.

“By no stretch of imagination, can the speaker of the National Assembly make blatantly partisan statements about the vote of no confidence? This is a constitutional instrument he is trying to obstruct. This act by itself renders him unfit to preside over any such session,” Parliamentary Leader of the PPP in the Senate, Sherry Rehman, had said in a statement.

Earlier talking to the media persons, the NA speaker had hit out at the joint opposition, saying that the no-trust move was bound to fail.