PESHAWAR: Opposition leader in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly Akram Khan Durrani said on Friday that coalition partners had failed to run the government, leaving the ground for the army to call the shots in the province.
“Except Hazara division the rest of the province has been handed over to the military,” he said while talking to journalists here at his chamber. Presently, army has been deployed in Peshawar, Malakand, Bannu, Kohat and Dera Ismail Khan divisions, he said and added that militancy had spread to Peshawar due to the government policies.
Mr Durrani said that the army was stopped from launching operation in Swat when he was the chief executive of the province. “This is a fact that on the request of Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal government the federal government had dispatched army to Swat, but I didn’t allow it to launch operation,” he maintained.
He said that police force was capable to maintain the government writ in Malakand at that time and situation was under control. He said that militancy had spilled over from the tribal areas into the settled areas of province owing to bad governance and inefficiency of the sitting government.
Mr Durrani said that the provincial government had confined itself to the Chief Minister’s House and even ministers and officials could not come out from their offices.
He said that the government even could not run the assembly session because of fear that was why proceedings were continued only for two days in a week. “The government had proposed to hold the assembly session inside the Chief Minister’s House or Governor’s House, but I turned down the proposal,” he stated.
Mr Durrani, who is also parliamentary leader of the MMA, disclosed that he had facilitated peace deals between the army and Taliban in the North and South Waziristan agencies when he was chief minister.
“Both agreements were signed at my residence,” he said, adding that the MMA government had helped the then corps commander to restore peace in the tribal areas.
Militants had struck deal with the government in the South Waziristan in 2004 while another agreement was signed with Hafiz Gul Bahadur group in adjacent North Waziristan Agency in 2006. The peace deals with the Taliban were subjected to criticism and the United States pressurised Paki-stan to scrap these agreements.
Mr Durrani said that Americans were not happy with the deals and the government was forced to pull out from these agreements.
He said that former governor Gen (retired) Ali Mohammad Jan Orakzai had also resigned when the government bowed to the US pressure.
“Not a single personnel was killed or kidnapped during the MMA government,” he claimed, saying that over three million people were displaced from Malakand in 2009 while thousands of families were still living in tents.
Later, speaking on a point of order in the assembly the opposition leader expressed concern over the delay in the appointment of judges for Darul Qaza, Swat, and circuit bench in Bannu.
He said that the president of Supreme Court Bar Association had also criticised delay in the appointment of judges in Darul Qaza.
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