KARACHI: PPP warns govt against hindering Asif’s welcome
By Our Reporter
KARACHI, April 11: Deputy Secretary-General of the Pakistan People’s Party Mian Raza Rabbani has accused the government of rendering the parliament redundant by not taking it into confidence in policy-making process. In this context, he cited the reported statement of Dr Sher Afghan that President Musharraf could send his authenticated text of speech to the parliament instead of delivering the same personally.
Addressing a news conference here on Monday, Mian Rabbani, who is also leader of the opposition in Senate, slammed the government for ‘victimizing the opposition through strong arm tactics’ and trying political activists under the Anti-Terrorism Act (ATA).
He said that the ATA, which had been amended to declare ‘strike’ a crime, was being used to brutalize the voice of dissent. He demanded immediate withdrawal of the Act.
Mr Rabbani said that in view of the government’s ‘anti-people’ policies, the combined opposition had requisitioned the session of the senate to discuss, among other things, the phenomenal increase in prices of items of daily consumption and the rising unemployment, the issues badly affecting the common man.
He said the opposition also wanted to discuss the curbs imposed by the government on the constitutional and fundamental right of the combined opposition to express dissent.
Mian Rabbani suggested that the deteriorating law and order, foreign policy with special reference to the composite dialogue between Pakistan and India, the issue of Baghliar dam along with other related matters, and performance of the parliamentary committee on Balochistan should also be deliberated upon during the session.
He said that the people had the right to know why the government had been keeping silence for so long on the Baghliar issue allowing India to go ahead with the controversial project. He said this policy would result in a fait accompli on the issue.
The senator maintained that the senate, at the moment, appeared headless as its chairman was out of the country and the deputy chairman had been made governor of a province. The problem with the opposition’s requisition, submitted on Monday, was that only the senate chairman could summon the session.
He also slammed the speaker of the national assembly on the car issue and recalled that a former NA speaker, Yusuf Raza Gilani, had been prosecuted by the NAB for making similar expenditure.
Replying to a question, he said that if the government tried to prevent the PPP workers from according their traditional welcome to Asif Zardari in Lahore on April 16, this could lead to a serious reaction. The PPP, he said, was used to government’s highhandedness. “Benazir Bhutto is the undisputed leader of the PPP,” he declared, and pointed out: “Asif Zardari has also acknowledged this.”
Meanwhile, Sindh PPP chief Syed Qaim Ali Shah has also warned that the party would strongly resist any move by the government to obstruct party workers from welcoming Mr Zardari.
Briefing newsmen about PPP’s Sindh Council meeting at the party secretariat, he claimed that the Sindh government was afraid of PPP’s inevitable success in the forthcoming local bodies election, arguing that the government had, therefore, resorted to splitting Digri and Mirpurkhas talukas attaching the latter to Sindhri.
