ISLAMABAD: An apparent pact of silence won the Muttahida Qaumi Movement a reprieve in the National Assembly on Tuesday though the embattled party’s lawmakers boycotted the house while Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan spoke without referring to last week’s security raid on their political nerve centre in Karachi.

In what seemed to be the result of some behind-the-scene contacts between the two sides, the interior minister had put off a promised policy statement in the house on the opening day of the session on Monday to explain the March 11 raid at the party’s ‘Nine Zero’ headquarters by paramilitary Rangers and possibly to respond to a harsh criticism of the military by MQM’s self-exiled leader Altaf Hussain.

Know more: Govt, MQM hold off fire in National Assembly

And now when he spoke on Tuesday, the minister talked of some other issues, mainly Sunday’s deadly suicide attacks on two churches in Lahore, avoiding any mention of the Karachi raid in which Rangers said they had seized a large quantity of illegal weapons and detained dozens of party activists, including some wanted convicts.

In the trade-off, the MQM lawmakers stayed away from the house and were reportedly preparing to leave for Karachi, for likely consultations with other party leaders, without pressing an adjournment motion they had submitted to the house secretariat for a debate on the raid.

Also read: Rangers raid MQM HQ in Karachi, detain member of Rabita Committee

That left everybody guessing whether the parliamentary ceasefire would reflect in Karachi as well, where Rangers filed a criminal complaint with a police station against the MQM leader’s outbursts against it.

Speaking of the Lahore incident, Chaudhry Nisar put the death from the two bomb attacks on Lahore churches and violence by protesters at 21 — 14 Chris­tians and seven Muslims — and said both the bombings and the subsequent violence like burning two persons alive and damaging property were equally the “worst kind of terrorism”.

He assured the house that those involved in that violence would be arrested and “strictest” action would be taken against them.

Responding to demands from rights activists and some leaders of the opposition PPP sparing the life of a presumed juvenile convict of a 2004 murder in Karachi, Shafqat Hussain, due to be hanged on Thursday, the interior minister said the government would be ready to re-examine the case if, during the intervening 36 hours, anybody could give information to prove that the convict was really a juvenile at the time he kidnapped and murdered a seven-year-old boy in Karachi.

REGRET OVER CCI: Earlier, Inter-Provin­cial Coordination Minister Riaz Hssain Pirzada offered regrets in the house for the government’s failure to convene a meeting of the Council of Common Interests during the last nine months in contravention of a constitutional requirement that the council meet after every 90 days, after the PPP staged a token protest walkout over the issue.

The matter was raised through a call-attention notice from five PPP members a day before the council meeting on Wednesday and the walkout came after a senior PPP member, Naveed Qamar, said his party was dissatisfied with the minister’s explanation about the delay in calling the council meeting.

“Whatever happened, I am sorry (for that),” Mr Pirzada said after the PPP lawmakers returned to the house. But he avoided commenting on Mr Qamar’s demand that the government assure the house that such a violation would not happen again.

Published in Dawn March 18th , 2015

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