Figures discrepancy: Privilege motion moved against Nisar

Opposition boycotts Senate for second consecutive day.

ISLAMABAD:

Opposition parties in Senate have moved a privilege motion against Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar for refusing to withdraw the figures pertaining to casualties from terrorist activities he had presented before the upper house.

Opposition lawmakers had accused Nisar of presenting ‘false’ statistics and demanded an apology.

Boycotting Senate proceedings for a second consecutive day on Friday, senators from all political parties save the Muttahida Qaumi Movement held a meeting and drafted the privilege motion against the interior minister. Twenty-four senators signed the motion.

“The interior minister provided the wrong statistics in reply to the questions asked by opposition members and then refused to take them back in violation of parliamentary traditions,” Pakistan Peoples Party Senator Raza Rabbani told journalists following the opposition’s decision.

He was referring to the total number of casualties resulting from terrorist attacks since 2002. In reply to one such question on Wednesday, the minister said 12,000 people had died in terrorist attacks across the country.



“The prime minister himself said during his visit to the US that Pakistan had lost over 40,000 people in the war against terrorism so far,” Senator Saeed Ghani said while speaking to The Express Tribune on Friday.

In his press conference, Senator Rabbani cited another figure as a matter of contention. “The interior minister said only 120 people were killed in 136 terrorist attacks in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa… if we look at recent statistics, 187 alone have died in four attacks,” he said.

The PPP senator said the interior minister’s attitude went against parliamentary norms.

“Although it is common for ministries to make mistakes, there are parliamentary ways to fix them… In such cases, the minister withdraws the reply and returns with correct figures,” he said. As such, Rabbani said it was the opposition’s right to object to the wrong information being provided to them.

“The opposition did not act in a non-parliamentary way or make an issue out of nothing,” said Rabbani.

The PPP senator also criticised the government for not bringing the issues of talks with the Taliban, IMF loans and the treason case against former president Pervez Musharraf before Parliament

MQM saves the day for PML-N

Due to the opposition’s boycott, the government has struggled to complete the quorum of 26 members necessary for Senate proceedings to continue.

It was MQM, however, that came to the government’s rescue and made it possible for the treasury benches to come close to meeting the mandatory quorum.

After the proceedings were allowed to carry on, the treasury members tried in vain to find a resolution to the opposition’s boycott.

Leader of the house Raja Zafarul Haq told the house that he had constituted a four-member committee for holding talks with the opposition members and bringing them back to the house in the next two days.

However, the boycotting members said they would accept nothing less than an apology from the interior minister.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 2^nd, 2013.