Politicking under the sky: Senators hold session outside parliament

Aitzaz Ahsan says senators were forced to come out in the open as the govt ‘closed the doors of Senate’.

ISLAMABAD:

In a move to intensify their attack on the government, opposition lawmakers — barring those from the MQM — held an informal session of the Senate outside the Parliament House on Wednesday.

“Parliamentary practices were bulldozed inside parliament. The house is being taken hostage and we would not allow this. Our fight for safeguarding parliamentary traditions would continue,” PPP Senator Raza Rabbani told his protesting colleagues during the informal session.

Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan, on the other hand, remained resolute in his belief that he did not commit any ‘non-parliamentary’ act, nor did he misbehave.

It all started on October 30 when Nisar presented figures of casualties in terrorist attacks in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa while answering questions in the Senate. The statistics were considered unrealistically low, and also called a ‘pack of lies’ by Awami National Party (ANP) Senator Zahid Khan. The incident had triggered a verbal duel between Nisar and Rabbani, after which the opposition first staged a walkout and then boycotted the session.

Meanwhile, Nisar told the National Assembly on Wednesday, while replying to leader of opposition Khursheed Shah’s point of order, “I have checked with the provincial government and they have confirmed that the statistics I quoted before the Senate on terrorism-related casualties were correct.”

Khursheed Shah requested the interior minister to “let go of his ego” and bring back the estranged senators to the upper house of parliament. In response, the interior minister said that parliament could see the video of the Senate session in question. “You can listen to my words, see my body language and attitude, and judge for yourself whether I was wrong. I have no ego problem,” said Nisar.

Addressing the boycotting senators on the street, Senator Rabbani said the opposition only wanted the interior minister to withdraw the ‘wrong’ statistics and demanding this was his parliamentary right. “But the minister made it into an ego problem. Even the Foreign Office and the Ministry of Defence have declared the figures incorrect,” he argued. The minister breached the Senate’s privilege by providing it with wrong information, he maintained.

Leader of the Opposition in the Senate Aitzaz Ahsan, who chaired the informal session, claimed that Nisar’s own party colleagues acknowledge that the statistics were incorrect but they are afraid of him and cannot openly speak about it.

Aitzaz said the protesting senators were forced to come out in the open and hold a separate session (on the street) as the government had closed the doors of the Senate.

ANP Senator Afrasiab Khattak said the government has failed in stopping US-sponsored drone attacks on its sovereign land.

During the National Assembly session, parliamentary leader of the PTI Shah Mehmood Qureshi and MQM Farooq Sattar urged both the interior minister and the opposition members to let go of their respective egos and return to the house. “Important issues of public interest need our immediate attention. We should be debating those instead of fighting with each other,” said Qureshi.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 7^th, 2013.