ISLAMABAD: The National Assembly on Friday mourned the killing of an opposition member, Tahira Asif, in Lahore with anger at the spread of terrorism in the country and some lawmakers voicing fears about a threat to their own lives.

The house met briefly to pray for and pay homage to the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) lawmaker who was shot in her car by gunmen in Lahore on Wednesday and died in hospital there on Thursday night.

While opposition leader Khursheed Ahmed Shah of PPP and representatives of some other parties urged the Punjab government to quickly track down the killers, some also spoke of dangers from terrorism which Pakhtunkhwa Milli Awami Party chief Mahmood Khan Achakzai said had made killing of a human being “as easy as killing a chicken”.

“Nobody’s life is safe…and all members of this house have similar dangers,” Sahibzada Tariqullah, parliamentary leader of the opposition Jamaat-i-Islami, said.

Before Defence Production Minister Rana Tanveer Hussain assured the house, on behalf of the government, that “no effort would be spared to arrest the accused and bring them to justice”, a colleague of his, Minister of State for Water and Power Abid Sher Ali, was stopped by a timely intervention by Speaker Sardar Ayaz Sadiq from disturbing the solemnity of the occasion by posing an apparently coarse challenge to Awami Muslim League leader Sheikh Rashid Ahmed.

A day earlier, a furious Mr Ali had to be led out of the house by some of his party colleagues after he left his seat and ran towards opposition benches after an MQM member had accused the ruling PML-N of patronising criminals.

“We don’t come here to hear abuses,” Sheikh Rashid said after being given floor for the second time to object to Mr Achakzai using an occasion for mourning to criticise Pakistan Awami Tehreek (PAT) chief Allama Tahirul Qadri for expressing his no-confidence in a judicial commission named to inquire into Tuesday’s shooting outside Mr Qadri’s home in Lahore in which several PAT followers were killed allegedly by police shots.

There was no finger-pointing in the house on Friday about the killing of the MQM lawmaker, but a senior party leader, Abdul Rashid Godil, while speaking in the house overnight on his return from Lahore, rejected media reports that linked the killing to a robbery attempt and described it as a targeted killing as he said one of the attackers had asked Ms Asif by name if she were the same person.

Mr Achakzai called for taking bold decisions to counter terrorism, though his party had not signed a resolution adopted by the house on Monday to support a full-scale military operation launched against militants in North Waziristan. He said Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, the house, the armed forces and mullahs must sit together to find a solution to “this misfortune” of terrorism. “Let us root out terrorism.”

Published in Dawn, June 21st, 2014