Senators stand their ground outside Parliament for second day

Opposition remains firm that Nisar provided incorrect figures.

ISLAMABAD: An informal session of the Senate outside the House of Parliament continued into its second day on Thursday, Express News reported.

The opposition remain firm in their belief that the figures of casualties in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P) presented by Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan are wrong, whereas Nisar denies this claim.

PPP senator Mian Raza Rabbani said that if talks with the Taliban commence “all acts of terrorism should stop.” He added that if any agreement is reached during the course of these talks, that agreement should then be ratified by the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P) Assembly and the Parliament.
“The government needs to emphasise a regional approach for resolving the current situation which is essentially regional in nature; a solution enjoying the support of all regional countries will be sustainable,” he said, quoting recommendation 13 of the consensus passed at the conclusion of the joint sitting of Parliament on October 22, 2008.

He added that the government needs to implement clause four of the same consensus, which reads “Pakistan’s territory shall not be used for any kind of attacks and all foreign fighters, if found on our soil, shall be expelled."

Day 1

On November 6, the first day of the protest, opposition lawmakers — barring those from the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) — had gathered outside the House of Parliament.

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

Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan, on the other hand, had remained resolute in his belief that he had neither committed any ‘non-parliamentary’ act nor misbehaved.

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Background

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 had told the National Assembly, 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 had 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 had 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,” Nisar had said.

Addressing the boycotting senators on the street, Senator Rabbani had 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 had argued. The minister breached the Senate’s privilege by providing it with wrong information, he had maintained.

Leader of the Opposition in the Senate Aitzaz Ahsan, who had chaired Wednesday’s informal session, had 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 had 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.

During the National Assembly session, parliamentary leader of the PTI Shah Mehmood Qureshi and MQM Farooq Sattar had 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,” Qureshi had said.