Three decade service: Overwhelmed Hashmi bids adieu to National Assembly

Calls on government to immediately announce snap polls.

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) leader Javed Hashmi resigned from his National Assembly seat on Thursday, following an emotional speech and a roaring applause from the entire house, marking an end to three decades of service to parliament.

Speaking in the house before submitting his resignation, the veteran politician from Multan, who recently defected from the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) to join Imran Khan’s PTI, advised politicians to change their attitude towards the country and called on the government to immediately announce snap polls.

He urged Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani to announce fresh parliamentary elections.

“This is the time we should think of evolving a system to save this country instead of saving the system (democratic),” Hashmi said in his farewell speech to the house he is familiar with since 1985.

“The country is deserted, it is sinking and unless we change our attitudes, we can’t save it from further downward slide,” Hashmi added, before leaving the chamber with tears in his eyes.

His daughter, Memoona Hashmi, joined him as he stepped out of the house, waving to cheering colleagues from all the parties.

Hashmi, who is known for his hard-line opposition to the military’s role in politics, contradicted the popular notion that a powerful security establishment can manipulate the political arena the way it wants.

Instead, he added, it is the weakness of politicians which makes the establishment powerful enough to redesign the political landscape.

Although Hashmi avoided any direct criticism towards the leadership of the PML-N, some references in his speech seemed to be disapproving of PML-N President Nawaz Sharif’s way of politicking and handling associates.

He praised Sharif, but regretted that his party kept on ignoring him on all crucial issues.

However, Hashmi’s departure from the house wasn’t one without controversy.

One of his regrets against the PML-N was that the party issued a ticket in 2008 parliamentary elections to an MP who has once allegedly tried to hit his daughter Memoona in the National Assembly during the tenure of former president Pervez Musharraf, when Hashmi was picked by secret agencies.

The MP, Hashmi revealed, was Musharraf’s law minister Zahid Hamid, who is now a PML-N lawmaker.

However PML-N leader Hanif Abbasi denied the claim, saying it was someone else. Hamid also denied that he ever made an attempt to hit Memoona, when she was protesting against her father’s detention in the assembly.

Call for institutions’ respect

The government called for mutual respect among state institutions after the opposition walked out of the house against the proposed increase in electricity and gas prices.

“It is terrible …the government is going to fetch more money from the downtrodden masses for a commodity that doesn’t exist at all,” said Leader of the Opposition in the National Assembly Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan before leading the walkout of MPs from his party.

Religious Affairs Minister Khursheed Ali Shah advised politicians to stop blaming the parliament, saying that it was the house that empowers them.

In an apparent reference to recent moves by the defence and judicial bodies to ‘undermine’ the parliament’s supremacy, Shah said it was binding on all state institutions to respect this seat of lawmaking.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 30^th, 2011.