Political standoff: Government buying time on issue of MQM resignations

PML-N is making all out efforts to persuade MQM to reverse their move, says Pervaiz Rashid

ISLAMABAD: The government seems to be in no hurry to accept the resignations of MQM lawmakers after Information and Broadcasting Minister Pervaiz Rashid indicated that all-out efforts are being made to talk the party’s leaders out of their collective move.

“There is no change in the status of the pending resignations,” the federal minister said. According to him, the National Assembly speaker has to observe the parameters of the high courts and the Supreme Court before verifying the decision.

The court parameters suggest that resignations are not acceptable in the form of protest. Since the MQM is protesting, Rashid said, their fate could only be determined after the speaker had completed his process. Meanwhile, he said, the government is working towards making MQM reconsider its decision of resigning from parliament.

A senior officer of the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) said that they were constitutionally-bound to hold elections within a stipulated time period when seats are vacated.

Under Article 224 of the Constitution, the Senate elections are to be held within 30 days on any vacant seat. Elections for vacant seats of the NA and any provincial assembly are to be held within 60 days.

PPP will get a chance to grow its strength in the Senate by eight members if the resignations of MQM lawmakers in the Senate and the Sindh Assembly are accepted. The PPP has 27 seats in the upper house with PML-N having 26 seats. PML-N is not expected to make any significant political gains. This leaves PTI with seven seats, besides the PPP, to benefit from resignations.

Dr Farooq Sattar of the MQM said that the party came out of all three elected forums – Senate, National Assembly and Provincial Assembly – under protest. They had submitted the reasons for that along with the resignations. “Maulana Fazlur Rehman, on behalf of parliament and the government, engaged us. We thought they were ready to listen to our grievances so we agreed to go and meet the prime minister,” he added.

The MQM and the PM held two rounds of dialogue but after a week’s gap, they went for a third round. “But we found that the government side was buying time,” said Sattar.

“The premise of our case was the rectification of constitutional, legal and human rights violations, which translated into two sets of issues. One was that it could have been handled by a grievance redressing committee which was the response of the government. Second that the composition of the committee will be mutually settled by the PML-N and the MQM under the facilitation of Rehman,” he added.

Sattar said that they were agreeing to the formation of this committee and would have reached an agreement on the composition of the scope of work. However, the government wanted everything to be taken up by the committee. The MQM felt that this committee was not in a position to address the issue of the unconstitutional and unannounced ban of MQM and its welfare activities.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 6^th, 2015.