ISLAMABAD: Some hope for peace arose in a tumultuous joint session of parliament on Wednesday as the parliamentary leader of the protesting Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI), Shah Mehmood Qureshi, said his party wanted to settle its crisis with the government through talks.

The development, in which he also announced his party’s plan to discuss an unexplained working paper, already shared with government negotiators, with a team of opposition peace-seekers later in the day, was immediately hailed by Khursheed Ahmed Shah, Leader of the Opposition in the National Assembly, as a victory for both parliament and Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif.

Mr Qureshi had come following a directive from party chief Imran Khan on Tuesday to go to the house to explain his party’s standpoint on its current agitation on demands, including a resignation by the prime minister for at least one month, and confirm to National Assembly Speaker Ayaz Sadiq resignations by more than 30 of a total of its 34 members in the house.

But in a long speech, often interrupted by lawmakers of the ruling Pakistan Muslim League-N (PML-N) and some of their allies, he avoided mentioning the resignations at all while defending nearly three weeks of sit-ins in Islamabad by thousands of supporters of the PTI and its ally Pakistan Awami Tehreek (PAT) and a siege of the parliament houses and Mr Sharif’s nearby official residence.

Qureshi avoids mentioning resignations

He assured the house that his party wanted to protect the Constitution and parliament and would not support any martial law — though calling last year’s general elections as “rejected by the whole nation”. He said the PTI wanted to break the impasse in talks with the government, particularly on its demand that the prime minister resign to allow a judicial commission to hold an impartial probe of allegations of massive rigging in the 2013 elections with PML-N’s involvement.

“We are ready to sit on the negotiating table, we are ready to settle matters,” he said before storming out of the house with an unspecified number of his party’s lawmakers.

It was after some apparent hesitation and a request from Mr Shah that the speaker gave floor to Mr Qureshi after some of his failed attempts and, in an apparent rebuff, the prime minister too stayed out of the house during the PTI leader’s hard-hitting speech both in Urdu and English that left many on the treasury benches and their allies agitated, some of them calling for taking hard line against the protesters.

But after the prime minister returned to a disorderly house, with so many lawmakers wanting to speak, Mr Shah delivered a sobering message, including an embarrassing advice to Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam-F (JUI-F) chief Maulana Fazlur Rehman to “become friends of the prime minister” and avoid “double-stan­dards” after the Maulana had urged the speaker to remove the “ambiguity” about PTI resignations by accepting at least those that were submitted by the signatories themselves.

The opposition leader re­minded the Maulana that he had welcomed and em­braced the PTI’s dissident ceremonial president Javed Hashmi, who too had resigned, on his arrival and speech in the house on Tuesday and wondered how one could talk peace with the protesters after the acceptance of their resignations.

Another government ally, Pakhtunkhwa Milli Awami Party leader Mahmood Khan Achakzai, asked the government to hold no dialogue with the PTI unless Mr Qureshi signed what he proposed to be a “well-worded” resolution to condemn the protesters’ entry in parliament’s lawns by breaking through a high boundary wall on Saturday night after a police crackdown.

It was on this point that some hecklers from the PML-N benches questioned Mr Qureshi’s claims about the peaceful nature of the protests but asked where else the protesters could have taken shelter in the face of police baton-charges, tear-gassing and alleged shooting that reportedly killed at least two people.

Mr Khursheed Shah said his call to the prime minister to stand fast to his position had been vindicated by Mr Qureshi’s appearance in the house and calling it his “political Kaaba”.

Addressing his comment to Mr Sharif, he said after what had happened in recent weeks “you must have also done some self-accountability” and realised “mistakes of your colleagues” but told him that “today is the day of your and parliament’s victory” which, he said, should not be wasted.

In an apparent response to an angry query from Defence Minister Khawaja Mohammad Asif as to why Mr Qureshi had not been asked about the attack on the parliament’s premises, the speaker told the house he had got a first information report registered by police on the incident and that he had asked the PTI leader to come to his chamber to talk on this issue as well as the resignations of his party members.

Some of the most strident speeches against the protesters came from the lawmakers of small parties like Senator Hasil Bizenjo of the Balochistan-based National Party and Aftab Ahmed Khan Sherpao, chief of the Qaumi Watan Party based in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, about whom Mr Qureshi said he would not comment at this point except saying that one could cite “many skeletons in (their) cupboards”.

The joint sitting’s debate on the prevailing situation will continue on Thursday at 11am.

Published in Dawn, September 4th, 2014