Standing ground: Raisani clings to job, defying party pressure

Official says CM will not resign despite PPP Balochistan exhorting him to quit.

ISLAMABAD: The embattled Chief Minister of Balochistan Nawab Muhammad Aslam Raisani has no intentions to resign from his post, a senior official of the Balochistan government said on Thursday.

“Raisani has not made up his mind to quit as the chief minister of the province,” the official told The Express Tribune, while requesting anonymity.

He said the Supreme Court gave a further two weeks to improve the law and order situation of the province.

Therefore, there was no question of resignation.

Despite mounting pressure, Raisani made his intentions known following the provincial chapter of the Pakistan Peoples Party urging him to resign, after the apex court declared the provincial government had lost the authority to govern the province as it had failed to protect the basic constitutional rights of the people in Balochistan, and also questioned the constitutional status of the provincial government.

The official said that the Supreme Court set aside its stay order and allowed the provincial government to carry on executing development projects that were envisaged in Public Sector Development Programmes. The stay order was issued on a petition challenging the implementation of the provincial development projects that were allegedly prepared by unfair means. The official added that Raisani was jubilant over the apex court’s decision allowing his government to continue executing the development projects.



Meanwhile, the president of the provincial chapter of PPP, Mir Sadiq Umrani, while explaining his party’s stand on the government’s constitutional and legal status, again asked the chief minister to resign. “The court has repeatedly ruled that the government of Balochistan has lost its constitutional authority to rule the province,” Umrani said in a statement to the media on Thursday.

“The provincial government is unconstitutional and it has no right to continue,” he said, adding, “The provincial government’s criminal character has dragged the province to the verge of total anarchy. The Raisani government is responsible for the increasing lawlessness and the constitutional machinery has failed in discharging its due role to maintain law and order in the province.”

Meanwhile, embarrassed by the apex court’s proceedings on Balochistan, Governor Nawab Zulfikar Ali Magsi has said that he never used any objectionable word to describe the members of the provincial assembly.

The embarrassment was caused on Wednesday when the Pakistan Medical Association Balochistan President Dr Sultan Tareen, while appearing before the Supreme Court, attributed a statement to Magsi describing members of the Balochistan Assembly as “thieves.”

Dr Tareen told the court that the governor had described the provincial assembly members as “thieves,” when a delegation of the provincial chapter of the PMA called on him last month to register their protest against the abduction of Dr Khan.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 8^th, 2012.