ISLAMABAD, Aug 16: The opposition in the National Assembly kept up its offensive against Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz on Wednesday over the scrapped sale of Pakistan Steel Mills (PSM), some members accusing him of links with a controversial partner in the buying consortium.
But ruling coalition members, including five ministers, insisted there had been no wrongdoing, arguing that the Supreme Court decision that annulled last March’s deal with a three-party consortium had cast no shadow over the role of the prime minister or his colleagues because it nowhere accused them of corruption.
On the fourth day of a debate on the issue, which is likely to conclude on Thursday, opposition members said acts of commission and omission referred to by the Supreme Court amounted to corruption for which, they said, Mr Aziz must resign from his office and that he and other members of the Cabinet Committee on Privatisation (CCOP) headed by him face criminal charges.
“No paragraph in the (court) judgment blames the prime minister or his associates,” Parliamentary Affairs Minister Sher Afgan Niazi said about the affair, which the opposition plans to cite a ground for a no-confidence move to be brought against the prime minister in the National Assembly on Aug 23.
The minister described the opposition criticism as a tactic to hide the perceived privatisation wrongdoings of their own previous governments and said Mr Aziz could not be expected to engage in acts blamed on him now after an unblemished record as a banker and his role in the country’s economic turnaround.
“Shaukat Aziz ka toti kal bhi bolta tha, aaj bhi bolta hai, aur kal bhi bolega” (Shaukat Aziz had authority yesterday, has it today and will have it tomorrow as well), Ports and Shipping Minister Babar Khan Ghauri said while defending the premier.
Narcotics Control Minister Ghaus Bakhsh Maher, who is a member of the reconstituted Council of Common Interests (CCI) told the house that CCI did not take a new decision to offer the PSM for privatisation again after the Supreme Court decision but only endorsed one taken by the then CCI in 1997.
Ministers of state Mohammad Raza Hayat Harraj (Overseas Pakistanis) and Khusro Bakhtiar (Foreign Affairs) also defended the prime minister with almost similar grounds, saying the court did not use the word “corruption” for the PSM privatisation.
Former Privatisation Commission chairman Khwaja Mohammad Asif of the Pakistan Muslim League-N (PML-N) and Chaudhry Manzoor Ahmed of the People’s Party Parliamentarians (PPP) accused the prime minister of having links with the Arif Habib group of companies, whose participation in the bidding for the PSM has been questioned by the Supreme Court ruling because of the group’s involvement in litigations and alleged role in last year’s stock market crash.
“Today the prime minister and Arif Habib have become Siamese twins who are inseparable,” said Mr Asif, who wanted a criminal case registered against the prime minister and his cabinet colleagues and taken it to its “logical conclusion”.
PPP’s Manzoor Ahmed accused the present rulers of personally benefiting from the sale of major enterprises such as the Pakistan Telecommunication Company, the Habib Bank and PSM, saying “they themselves have bought these institutions”, and challenged the prime minister to deny his links with Mr Arif Habib. He threatened if the premier did so “we will establish his link”.
Liaqat Baloch of the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal, opening the long debate for Wednesday, accused the CCOP of “criminal negligence” in a deal done in “indecent haste” while bidders were different from buyers and said the government was in fact ignoring rather than honouring the court ruling.
He demanded that the issue be presented to a joint sitting of parliament after the NWFP chief minister had disagreed with the new CCI’s decision to offer the PSM for sale again.
The opposition staged a token walkout from the house during the debate to protest against the reported killing of Nasrullah Jatoi, brother of Muzaffargarh district Nazim and former PPP MNA Abdul Qayyum Jatoi after PPP chief whip Khurshid Ahmed Shah and party member Ms Naheed Khan blamed the incident on the ruling Pakistan Muslim League workers.
