ISLAMABAD: Though it would be the second such case in Pakistan, the National Assembly was hardly enthused to hear from the government on Thursday that the Lahore police would, after a lag of more than two months, register an agitating party’s complaint implicating Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif in a police shooting that left at least 14 Pakistan Awami Tehreek activists dead.

Both friends and foes had been urging the government during a debate in the house over the past 11 days not to delay the matter any more, and it was expected to happen overnight before talks failed to make a breakthrough with the Pakistan Awami Tehreek (PAT), whose followers, along with those of the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI), have been besieging parliament for a week, also seeking the prime minister’s ouster and fresh elections.

Railways Minister Khawaja Saad Rafiq had told the house on Wednesday, in the presence of the prime minister, that what is called first information report (FIR) in parlance about the June 17 shootout could be registered if the names of unspecified “innocents” were removed from the complainants’ list of 21 accused.

But, in an apparent change of mind, Defence Minister Khawaja Mohamamd Asif said on Thursday that the government had conveyed to the other side even in Wednesday night’s talks its readiness to entertain the FIR with the prime minister’s name and that “we have begun the registration process”.

He said the government had forgone a legal right to appeal against a Lahore High Court ruling that upheld an earlier order of an additional sessions judge in Lahore directing the city’s Faisal Town police station to register the complaint from Minhajul Quran, a sister organisation of the PAT.

The announcement caused little stir in the house, opposition members have often accused the government of complicating matters with delayed responses such as to the PTI’s original demand for a vote audit in only four National Assembly constituencies in the Punjab province and procrastinating on the issue of the Lahore shooting ahead of a troubled return home of Dr Qadri from Canada on June 23.

The minister acknowledged the unusual delay in conceding to the right of the heirs of the dead to get their FIR registered, for which he offered no excuses, and said that “that right is being given now”.

The last time a prime minister was named in a murder FIR in Pakistan was in 1974 when prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was accused of conspiring a Nov 11 shooting in Lahore in which Nawab Mohammad Ahmed Khan, father of dissident National Assembly member of Mr Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), Ahmed Raza Kasuri, was killed when the two men were driving home after attending a wedding party.

Although an inquiry by a high court judge had exonerated Mr Bhutto of the charge and Mr Kasuri too had apparently made peace with his party leader, military dictator Gen Ziaul Haq, who toppled the PPP government in a 1977 coup, later dug out the case that led to a controversial conviction and execution of Mr Bhutto.

Nobody mentioned Mr Bhutto’s case in speeches in the house, but the implications of the Lahore FIR have been discussed on the sidelines of the continuing house debate on the situation arising from two weeks of PTI and PAT sit-ins in Islamabad after the Aug 14 march from Lahore by tens of thousands of their supporters.

While announcing the government decision about the Lahore FIR -- welcomed by Naveed Qamar of the PPP and Abdul Rahim Mandokhel of the government-allied Pakhtunkhwa Milli Awami Party – Khawaja Asif ruled out the possibility of the prime minister resigning or of agreeing to what he called unconstitutional courses of forming a “national government” or one of technocrats as a solution to the present crisis.

“We will not step back an inch against unconstitutional and illegal demands,” he said about PTI chief Imran Khan’s demand for the prime minister to resign at least for a month to allow a free judicial probe of his party’s allegations of a massive rigging in last year’s general elections and Allama Qadri’s demand for the replacement of the present government with what he calls a “national government”.

Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs Sheikh Aftab Ahmed denied a reported claim by PTI chairman Imran Khan that the government had made an offer to make him a deputy prime minister and that he had rejected it, and said a PML-N senator, Chaudhry Jaffar Iqbal, had made a proposal for the creation of such a post only “jokingly”.

Published in Dawn, August 29th, 2014