National Assembly: Opposition blasts government over Islamabad spectacle

PTI, PPP and AML criticise Islamabad police for prolonging the stand-off.

ISLAMABAD:

Opposition parties in the National Assembly took the government to task on Friday over the Jinnah Avenue incident that paralysed the capital for several hours on Thursday.

The Opposition’s onslaught was led by Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf’s (PTI) deputy parliamentary leader Shah Mehmood Qureshi, Pakistan Peoples Party’s (PPP) Naveed Qamar and Sheikh Rashid Ahmed of the Awami Muslim League.

“It was a shameful and dangerous incident that exposed Islamabad’s poor security apparatus. It looked like the government was leaderless,” said Shah Mehmood Qureshi. The opposition was particularly irked by absence of Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan in the National Assembly.

“Why should we believe that the government was serious in taking opposition onboard while formulating national security policy when it was not even ready to listen to us,” said Qureshi.

The PTI leader said his party was hoping the government would brief the house about the details of the incident adding that the government appeared helpless and unnecessarily prolonged the drama, he added. He also said that Islamabad police was ill-equipped and ill-prepared to handle a situation like this.



Repeated assurances by Parliamentary Affairs Minister Sheikh Aftab Ahmed that the government would give a detailed briefing to the legislators, failed to cool down tempers of members from the opposition benches.

When National Assembly Speaker Sardar Ayaz Sadiq asked Aftab Ahmed to respond to Qureshi’s criticism, the minister told the house that the government would give details of the incident on Monday.

“A single armed man literally paralysed the government. It was the PPP leader Zamurd Khan who had to intervene and end it ultimately,” PPP’s Naveed Qamar said. He praised his party colleague for his ‘brave’ step to lunge at the gunman and bring the ‘drama’ to an end. Khan received praise from other opposition members including Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) leader Nabeel Gabol who had visited the crime scene himself.

Qamar said the incident badly exposed the weakness of Islamabad’s security apparatus.

AML chief Sheikh Rashid Ahmed supported Qureshi and criticised the capital’s police for the security lapse for exposing its weakness to terrorist organisations who would feel emboldened after an incident like this.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 17^th, 2013.