ISLAMABAD, Aug 10: The ruling Pakistan Muslim League’s parliamentary party in Senate met at the Parliament House here on Friday to discuss the country’s political situation following the government’s decision to postpone imposition of emergency.
Insiders told Dawn that PML’s lawmakers expressed dissatisfaction over the explanation provided to them about the government’s decision to avoid imposing the emergency. They also complained that they were disregarded by the party and government at the decision-making level.
Sources quoted Senator S.M. Zafar, party’s constitutional and human rights adviser, as saying that mishandling of the presidential election could trigger another crisis. He is also reported to have stressed the need for making the process transparent and keeping it within the constitutional domain, otherwise things could slip out of the ruling party’s control.
Addressing the party’s senators, president and PML’s parliamentary leader Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain explained the issues being faced by the government and the party.
According to a press release, Chaudhry Shujaat said that he had advised the president to impose partial emergency rule after an unsuccessful suicide attack on Interior Minister Aftab Sherpao.
He said that if his advice had been accepted, incidents like the Lal Masjid operation could have been avoided.
He said he had informed President Gen Pervez Musharraf that people favoured the imposition of emergency, but the president had made it clear that his first priority was to hold free and fair elections and he wanted the assemblies to complete their tenure. Chaudhry Shujaat said that he had given the advice to impose emergency rule in good faith.
He said that the prevailing situation in the country also was not hidden from keen observes, adding that the chances of internal disruption, lawlessness, extremism, subversion, murders of foreign citizens and damage to public property were enough to justify the imposition of emergency. But, he said, the president had ruled against the advice.
Asserting that certain elements were bent on disrupting the political atmosphere but the PML would not allow them to succeed.
He said that everything the PML had done was in the larger national interest.
