ISLAMABAD, Feb 3: The People’s Party Parliamentarians (PPP) and the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal (MMA) alliance staged separate token protest walkouts at the start of a National Assembly session on Friday.
PPP members walked out of the house after speaker Chaudhry Amir Hussain did not agree to their demand for an immediate debate on an adjournment motion seeking a debate on the so-called “red notices” issued by the Interpol about former prime minister Benazir Bhutto on a Pakistan government request.
Party secretary-general Raja Pervez Ashraf said the government’s move in approaching the international police organisation was aimed at a character assassination and political victimisation of the self-exiled former prime minister.
“This is a conspiracy to finish politics in the country,” he said, while pressing for taking up the adjournment motion submitted by party member Ms Naheed Khan.
Mr Ashraf led the party members out of the house despite an assurance by the speaker that he would admit the motion on some later stage.
“I am very liberal, I take a liberal view when it concerns a party leader,” the speaker said.
The MMA members walked out to protest against what alliance deputy leader Liaqat Baloch described as failure of the concerned countries to take action despite continuous protests by Muslims against the publication of objectionable caricatures of the holy Prophet Mohammad (PBUH) by some European newspapers.
“Come back soon because I will later start business of the house,” the speaker told the MMA protesters.
Although the speaker had initially planned to admit opposition adjournment motions against the offensive caricatures immediately but hold a debate on the next working day because of the absence of Foreign Minister Khurshid Mehmood Kasuri from the house.
But later, on the insistence by opposition members — to which some ruling party members also agreed — the speaker agreed to an immediate debate on the adjournment motions which consumed the whole day’s proceedings.
Earlier, Railways Minister Mian Shamim Haider made a statement about a derailment near Rawalpindi on Jan 29 in which two women were killed and about 40 other passengers were injured.
