JUI-F man’s rant on Mir Ali incident spoils feel-good mood

PML-N looked miserable by failing to collect even the minimum number of legislators required for establishing quorum.

ISLAMABAD:

The last sitting of the National Assembly on Friday fully exposed as to how confused ‘our representatives’ behaved when dealing with some crucial issues related to the security of our people and the state.

Before discussing their conduct in this respect, however, I have to report that the morning after proving its numerical edge, the PML-N looked miserable by failing to collect even the minimum number of its legislators required for establishing quorum.

It was obvious that a large number of ruling party legislators rudely wanted to convey this to their handlers, especially the interior minister, that they could not be taken for granted by occasional pampering.

For an effective display and sustaining of their numerical edge in the house, Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan and his leader have to acknowledge the worth of their legislators seriously. People returning to a directly elected house through viciously contested battles in home constituency must also savour the illusion of being consulted, constantly, for crafting the ruling party’s strategy and the process of decision-making by the government.

It took more than 50 minutes of frantic phone calls, not only from the interior minister but also by some trusted aides working at the prime minister’s secretariat, to collect a respectable number for starting the house business.  Disregarding the day’s agenda, Awais Leghari appeared too keen to extract an ‘adulatory resolution’ from the house. Nawaz Sharif had personally intervened to see him elected as chairperson of the prestigious national committee on foreign affairs. Although a loyal and hardworking type, Awais had mostly been treated as an ‘outsider’ by the PML-N mainstream, simply for being the son of Sardar Farooq Khan Leghari, an erstwhile ‘political enemy’ of Nawaz Sharif. He had also headed the high-profile ministry of Information Technology throughout the Khaki-sponsored five years of the PML-Q government.

Awais Khan Leghari certainly wanted to do some paying back by pushing the house to pass a resolution that should praise the PML-N government for getting a resolution passed from the UNGA, which he believed had clearly censored the use of drones by the US.

Jamaat-e-Islami remains the most pampered ally of the PTI-led government in K-P, but its members in the national assembly have not joined the opposition boycott of the national assembly. They were not pleased with the UN resolution regarding drones. The MQM expressed its own reservations. Yet, in the end, the youthful Leghari did succeed to pat the Nawaz Sharif government with a laudatory resolution. It presumably was time to go home with self-pleasing assumptions, but a member from the JUI-F benches spoilt the feel-good mood.

Through a point of order, Mullah Jamaluddin tried hard to make us believe that since Wednesday night, Pak Army had launched a “ruthless operation” in Mir Ali town of North Waziristan. “The houses, streets and bazaars of that town”, he kept claiming, “were replete with dead bodies of innocent persons, killed by ceaseless shelling.” He alleged that some women were also hit by deadly shells and most victims were visitors to this town, staying at two hotels catering for truck drivers etc. In a sobbing voice, he also claimed that the Army was not “allowing us to collect dead bodies and make arrangements for their burial, according to Islamic and local traditions.”

Not for once, this JUI-F legislator cared to admit that the so-called “military operation” in North Waziristan might have been a retaliatory strike against perpetrators of a suicide attack on an army picket late Wednesday. The militants rather appear to have asked for it by attacking teams wanting to reach the spot of suicide attack for rescue activity. Mohammad Nazir, another legislator, fully supported the story told by Maulvi Jamal. Both of them rather forcefully rebutted everything that the Army had been telling us regarding the recent incidents in North Waziristan through the ISPR.

It surely was the exclusive responsibility of the interior minister to tell us the true story. Instead of doing this, he merely stood to lament that the PPP and the PTI legislators had not returned to the house. He firmly reiterated that by using the word “TAMASHA”, he had not humiliated anybody. It was not his fault, if Syed Khurshid Shah et al felt offended by this “perfectly parliamentary word” and he will not succumb to their pressure for an apology.

While stubbornly sticking to an ego point, the interior minister clearly lost the opportunity to educate us regarding the factual background of recent incidents in North Waziristan. Do not blame an average Joe of this country, therefore, if he wholeheartedly bought the story that Pak Army was targeting the “innocent residents” of Mir Ali since Wednesday night for “no legitimate reason.”

Published in The Express Tribune, December 21^st, 2013.