ISLAMABAD: In a turnabout after more than two months of cosying up with the government against a siege of sit-ins, the opposition was in revolt in the National Assembly on Thursday, walking out of the house twice over the previous day’s police action against protesting workers of a state energy company.

Lawmakers of most opposition parties first staged a token walkout to protest at the use of batons and teargas against hundreds of workers of the Oil and Gas Development Co Ltd and later stormed out in a boycott of the day’s remaining proceedings in a move that also targeted Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan after Leader of Opposition Khursheed Shah talked of unspecified “incompetent people” causing problems for Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif.

The walkouts, which the Muttahida Qaumi Movement did not join apparently because of its own rows with PPP to which Mr Shah belongs, followed a rumpus in the Senate on Wednesday over the same incident that happened on a crossing south of the parliament house.

The workers, about 25 of whom were arrested and several injured in clashes with police, were protesting against government plans to sell up to10 per cent of its stakes in the OGDCL, which Mr Shah said should not be privatised for being a profitable enterprise, whose profit in the fiscal 2012-13 stood at Rs124 billion.

Members of smaller opposition parties, including the Jamaat-i-Islami, Qaumi Watan Party and Balochistan National Party, walked out with the PPP after a hard-hitting speech by the opposition leader, who reiterated his call to the prime minister in the house on Wednesday to consult opposition parties about privatisation.

He said the opposition would resist use of force against workers, contrary to support it gave the government against what he called a conspiracy against the parliament in the shape of sit-ins by the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf and Pakistan Awami Tehreek.

“Don’t tear that strength apart,” he said about what has been a united stand of the government and most opposition parties against a threat to democracy from the sit-in and their demands for the resignation of the prime minister, dissolution of the National Assembly and new polls after electoral reforms.

MQM members stayed in their seats while an independent member on opposition benches, Jamshaid Ahmed Dasti, sprawled himself on the floor in front of the dais and, with a scarf wrapped around his head, complained that he too was injured by police batons after he asked them to let the OGDCL workers proceed to the parliament house.

After being persuaded by some members of the treasury benches to return to his desk, Mr Dasti claimed that police had also fired rubber bullets and demanded action against the chief and other senior officials of Islamabad police.

MQM member Abdul Rashid Godail condemned the police action and demanded a probe by a house committee.

After the legislators returned to the house, the interior minister took the floor to promise “a high-level inquiry” after mentioning concerns voiced by Mr Dasti and Mr Godail but making no mention of Mr Shah’s scathing speech or the walkout he led.

“What more incompetence could be there?” a furious Mr Shah asked while referring to what he saw as a belated promise of the interior minister to hold an inquiry to ascertain facts about what happened a day earlier.

“They are incompetent people,” he said, adding that it was “because of them that problems are created”, before announcing the boycott of the house for the remainder of the day and storming out with all those opposition members who had earlier staged the token walkout.

Chaudhry Nisar came back to the house soon afterwards, explaining that his sudden departure from the house after his earlier remarks was necessitated by some urgent business and saying that his decision to hold an inquiry was not out of any ignorance about the incident after he had learnt from the officials of his ministry and media reports but because of what he called different viewpoints voiced by Mr Dasti and Mr Godail.

But the minister didn’t seem to help cool tempers as he described the opposition attitude as ‘bat ka batangar banana’ (exaggeration) and “making a ‘tamasha’ (spectacle) of everything”.

These remarks brought a condemnation in a statement issued later by the office of the opposition leader and a promise of more protest in the house on Friday.

Published in Dawn, October 30th, 2014