PML-N stops members from meeting govt reps

Party legislators will have to seek permission from Chaudhry Nisar if they are to make 'unavoidable’ contact with PM.

ISLAMABAD: The Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) has barred its parliamentarians from holding direct meetings with Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani and other members of the federal cabinet without seeking prior permission from top party leaders.

The ‘unusual and harsh’ decision appears to be in line with the main opposition group’s recently-overhauled policy to add more aggression to its approach towards the government it says is corrupt and lacking in prestige.

At least a couple of officials from the party confirmed to The Express Tribune on Tuesday that all the MPs — Members of the National Assembly (MNAs) and the Senate — had been asked to follow this instruction. Usually, politicians do not sever ‘personal or professional’ contacts under any circumstances as most of them have family relationships or are friends despite being from opposing parties.

Members who spoke to The Express Tribune did not explain what caused the leadership to go for this option but a few of  them said they believed it was an indication of how the party would be behaving in a stepped up campaign against the government. According to the message circulated among the lawmakers, MNAs from the party would have to inform opposition leader Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan if they had to make an ‘unavoidable’ contact with either Prime Minister Gilani or any of his cabinet colleagues.

Similarly, senators from the party would be required to discuss their issues with Ishaq Dar, the parliamentary leader of PML-N in the upper house and one of the closest associates of Nawaz Sharif. A top leader from Lahore, who did not want to be named, said Sharif did not want his parliamentarians to seek any ‘favour’ from the government in any form because he had decided to go all out against the beleaguered administration.  The PML-N last week decided to mobilise the public against the government on issue to issue basis but stopped short of demanding snap elections as was being perceived earlier. There were strong indications that the party had decided to tread a different path now.

On Tuesday, Nawaz Sharif told a gathering of his party officials in a Sindh town that the PML-N would no more be a friendly opposition, a role it has been accused of undertaking for more than two years. On Monday, members from the party chanted slogans and thumped desks to back an anti-government speech by Chaudhry Nisar in the National Assembly. There are anticipations that an aspect of ‘street chaos’ would soon be added to Pakistan’s politics after a brief lull following general elections in 2008.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 10^th, 2010.