ISLAMABAD: An embattled Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif heard both morale-boosting battle cries and some satire about him in parliament on Thursday as lawmakers lashed out at protesters besieging their chamber, who got some similar lashing from an unkindly rain outside.

Opposition senators dominated the third day of a debate in the joint sitting of the National Assembly and Senate on the situation arising from three weeks of sit-ins, in Islamabad by the protesting Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf and Pakistan Awami Tehreek , with their assurances of support to the prime minister tinged with calls for a change from a perceived arrogance in his 18-month-old administration’s style of governance.

A pouring rain had forced most protesters to take shelter in tents and under trees while lawmakers from both the opposition parties railed the mode of their campaign to press their demands including a resignation by the prime minister for at least a month to let a judicial commission hold an unhindered probe of allegations of a massive rigging of last year’s general elections.

With the main entrance to the parliament house blocked by protesters, the lawmakers, as on other days of the siege, came to the chamber either through the adjacent presidency or a gate allowed for journalists.

Mian Raza Rabbani, the parliamentary leader of the main opposition Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) in the Senate, made a stirring call to democratic forces to unite in what he saw as a long battle for the supremacy of parliament, Haji Mohammad Adeel, parliamentary leader of the Awami National Party (ANP) in the upper house, said the prime minister’s present position, with his own official residence under siege since Saturday, reminded him of India’s last Moghal emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar.

This was a reference to the last days of the king before his capture by Birtish colonial forces inside the Red Fort in Delhi in 1857. Senator Mushahid Hussain Syed, Secretary General of the Pakistan Muslim League-Q, too had some sarcasm in store for Mr Sharif while he called for change from a “Moghul mindset” to a “Mandela mindset” -- a reference to the late former South African president Nelson Mandela’s reconciliation policy -- and used a Punjabi epithet to call for a halt to a mentality of ‘masi vehra’ (freedom at a maternal aunt’s home).

A perceived stiff neck of the prime minister and some of his cabinet ministers has been the butt of criticism during the current debate and a topic in the corridors of parliament with many people speculating whether what is described in the street language as “sarya (iron rod) in the neck” had bent, or gone, as the government seemed reaching out to all opposition parties to face the present challenge.

The prime minister has been sitting through all three days of the current debate in parliament except for about an hour’s absence on Wednesday, as an apparent rebuff, during a speech by PTI parliamentary leader Shah Mahmood Qureshi, and is widely expected to address the house on Friday.

PPP Senator Aitzaz Ahsan in his speech on the first day of the debate on Tuesday, described the prime minister’s new stance by using a Punjabi joke about a mother praying for a police officer who gave a thrashing to her disobedient son for some offence that made him cry for his mother.

He said he would thank PAT leader Dr Tahirul Qadri for making the prime minister come to parliament after a long absenteeism.

Mr Rabbani said in his speech on Thursday the present difficult situation would not have come if the absenteeism of government ministers had not isolated parliament and they had been accountable to parliamentary committees.

He described the present protest by two parties as the manifestation of a “proxy mode” in a battle to undermine the Constitution by bringing “puppets on the streets” and warned of a threat to the federation if the present democratic system was derailed and the landmark Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution.

Mr Rabbani disagreed with his own party’s opposition leader in the National Assembly, Khursheed Ahmed Shah, describing the PTI parliamentary leader’s pledge in the house on Wednesday to defend the constitution and try to settle the crisis through dialogue as a “victory of parliament” and said it could be only a partial victory.

“The war is continuing,” he said in power struggle between institutions for “state control”, adding that only a united parliament could counter conspiracies against itself.

He called for revisiting the famous Charter of Democracy signed by the slain PPP leader Benazir Bhutto and Mr Sharif in 2006 in London, particularly vis-à-vis civil-military relationship, and proposed the formation of a parliamentary committee for the job and to bring in all democratic forces in the charter.

Senator Mushahid Hussain, whose party is a PAT ally in the present protest, blamed the present situation on what he called the government’s failure to act in time on issues like a June 17 police shooting in Lahore that killed at least 14 PAT workers and the PTI’s original demand for a vote audit in four National Constituencies in Punjab.

His call to the prime minister to be “more inclusive” and forget “bitterness of the past” seemed aimed at seeking a change of policy over former President Musharraf’s trial for high treason that the government is pursuing.

Planning and Development Minister Ahsan Iqbal came out with a strong denunciation of the PTI and PAT protest sit-ins as well as encroachment into the premises of the parliament house by breaking through a gate of the boundary wall at the weekend and a brief capture of the headquarters of state-run Pakistan Television on Monday.

He made a fun of the PTI and PAT leaders giving their sermons live on private television channels from shipping containers serving as their temporary homes calling it a “containerised revolution”.

He described their campaign as a conspiracy against Pakistan’s development, which he said had been foiled by the response of parliament.

The minister proposed formation of a parliamentary committee to get the parliament’s lawns, where protesting women are now camped, cleared of the intruders and, citing acceptance of most of their demands, asked all protesters to end their sit-ins and “let the country move forward”.

In a speech laced with poetry, Senator Sajid Mir, head of the religious Jamiat Ahle Hadees, but elected to the upper house on a PML-N ticket, accused Imran Khan of throwing “no-ball after no-ball” at the prime minister instead of protecting his party’s “runs” in the PTI-ruled Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province and called PAT as “semi-political Taliban”.

Published in Dawn, September 5th, 2014

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