PESHAWAR: CM urges suo motu action against ‘horse-trading’
By Mohammed Riaz
PESHAWAR, Aug 5: Chief Minister Akram Khan Durrani has urged the superior judiciary to take suo motu action against all those senators who had purchased their Senate seats by paying millions of rupees to provincial lawmakers in the NWFP.
Speaking to delegates of the Pakistan Federal Union of Journalists and office-bearers of the Khyber Union of Journalists here at the Frontier’s House on Friday, Mr Durrani said that the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal, after an inquiry expelled six of its MPAs who had sold their votes, but the honourable court had restored them.
He claimed that he had asked Pakistan Muslim League president Chaudary Shujaat Hussain to nominate three activists, not mills owners, of his party and he (Durrani) would get them elected for the Senate.
Besides taking action against lavish wedding meals, he said, the judiciary should also take action against those politicians who had made politics a game of money and corruption.
The chief minister said the MMA had exposed its own MPAs who had sold their votes. He said the religious parties’ alliance had allotted Senate tickets to the poor, but honest people still living in rented houses. “We are harbinger of positive change in the province. We will never compromise on principles,” he added.
NWFP Information Minister Asif Iqbal Daudzai, Education Minister Maulana Fazle Ali Haqqani, adviser to the chief minister Shamsur Rehman Shamsi and Peshawar Press Club President Syed Bukhar Shah were also present on the occasion.
Mr Durrani briefed the journalists in detail about the performance of his government and said they had placed the education and health on the top of their priority list. Besides even-handed development of all districts, he said, the MMA government during the last four years had taken concrete measures for the establishment of an Islamic society in the province.
He said the government has neither made any compromise on the principles nor did anything that would have damaged the interest of the people of the province. Despite MMA’s opposition role in the centre, he said, the NWFP government had deftly maintained working relations with Islamabad.
He said the discovery of new oil and gas reserves in southern districts would help in solving longstanding problems of the area. He said that NWFP fulfilled 75 per cent of the total power requirements of the country.
