Claims and rejoinders: APC, long march a ploy to save Musharraf says Mashhood

Law minister says Pakistan needs stability, not protests or ‘tsunami marches’.

LAHORE:

Pakistan Awami Tehreek chief Tahirul Qadri’s call for an all parties conference was an act of desperation to press the government to release former president Pervaiz Musharraf, Law Minister Rana Mashhood said at a press conference at his 90 Shahrah-e-Quaid-i-Azam office on Sunday.

The law minister said all the hue and cry about a long march by Qadri and the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf was nothing more than a tactic to get Musharraf released or allowed to leave the country. He said the politicians rallying behind Qadri had been rejected by the nation and were using anti-democratic means to get their demands met.

Politicians who had called the all parties conference, Qadri, Imran Khan, Pakistan Muslim League-Quaid’s Chaudhry Pervez Elahi, Shujat Hussain and Sheikh Rasheed, were the same politicians who had supported Musharraf when he toppled the PML-N government on October 12, 1999, Mashhood said. He said Imran Khan, Qadri and the Chaudhrys had supported Musharraf’s referendum then and were now “waiting for a signal from other quarters to gain power through backdoor channels”.

“I want to tell these politicians that any hopes for such a signal have been dashed for good...when Qadri landed in Lahore, he asked the army to talk to him, but was duly snubbed,” said Mashhood.

He said the courts would decide the fate of the cases against Musharraf. He said the tactics of announcing all parties conferences and long marches to intimidate the government would not work. The law minister said the parties who had boycotted Qadri’s APC had shown themselves to be dedicated to democracy.

He said Qadri and Imran Khan did not trust national institutions and were willing to use any means to obtain power. Mashhood said the four demands Imran Khan had put forth were based on mere conspiracy theories pertaining to the judiciary and the Election Commission of Pakistan. He said the proper forum for redress in this case should have been the parliament.

The Pakistan Tehree-i-Insaf’s performance in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa was very poor, he said. “This is why Imran Khan has resorted to ball tampering.”

He said political leaders dejected over their performance in the May 11 elections should wait for the next elections. “If Imran Khan is so upset about Nawaz Sharif’s victory speech at 11:20pm, how does he explain Asad Umar’s acceptance of the PTI’s mandate in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa at midnight.”

On May 9, 2013, two days before the elections, Khan predicted that the PTI would win in KP, Mashhood said. “What information did he base that on?”

He said the government had constituted a joint investigation team comprising members of the intelligence agencies to probe the Model Town incident. “Nowhere in the world would you see a country that is in a state of war and its political parties are trying to topple the government.”

He said the country needed stability to tackle the war against terrorists and to counter a possible blowback in the cities. Holding protests or long marches was not the way, he said, adding that Imran Khan needed to “stop dreaming about becoming the prime minister” and should do something to help the internally displaced persons in KP.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 30^th, 2014.