ISLAMABAD: The Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI), which usually doesn’t give the ruling party an inch, apparently missed an opportunity on Tuesday to take Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi down a notch in the National Assembly.

The last item on the packed agenda for private members’ day was a calling attention notice, submitted by PTI lawmakers Asad Umar, Sheheryar Afridi, Shafqat Mehmood, Shireen Mazari and Arif Alvi.

The purpose of the notice was to “invite attention of law minister to... lack of action by National Accountability Bureau (NAB) on the interim report about serious wrongdoings in the award of LNG terminal contract”.

Despite the ambiguous wording of the notice, there could be no doubt that the PTI intended to raise the issue on the floor of the house as a way to discredit the newly-appointed prime minister, who is a principal accused in a NAB case registered in 2015 regarding the award of an LNG import contract in violation of Public Procurement Regulatory Authority (PPRA) rules.

Law minister says PM will brief parliamentary leaders on LNG contract issue

According to the bureau, the inquiry was closed so that an ongoing project of national importance was not jeopardised by NAB intervention.

In their speeches immediately after PM Abbasi took over, PTI chief Imran Khan and party spokesperson Fawad Chaudhry had both expressed a desire to move the courts against him over his alleged role in the award of the Rs220bn contract.

However, the party then had a change of heart and at a later press conference, the PTI chief stated that they were only looking to NAB to take action in the matter.

The notice was taken up towards the fag-end of proceedings by Deputy Speaker Murtaza Javed Abbasi. However, nearly all PTI MNAs had left the house at the time, and none of the original movers was on hand to take up the notice.

Seizing the opportunity, Law Minister Zahid Hamid told the house: “The prime minister, who still holds the portfolio of petroleum minister, wants to brief parliamentary leaders on the issue,” asking the deputy speaker to drop the matter.

“The prime minister will issue a fresh notice for the briefing,” he told the house.

When asked why no PTI MNA was on hand in the assembly when the notice was called, PTI whip Shireen Mazari told Dawn that they were told the notice would not be taken up.

“Calling attention notices are usually clubbed together at the start of proceedings, but the deputy speaker kept delaying it. We repeatedly asked for the issue to be taken up, since we had to leave for another important meeting, but to no avail.”

She also blamed the law minister for not showing up on time. “Earlier, the minister wasn’t there, and when he did show up, he told us that the PM wanted to give a briefing on the matter and told us the notice would not be taken up.”

Tuesday’s session was quite frustrating for the PTI, whose members got involved in several spats on the floor of the house. Najaf Sial of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), first riled up the PTI by launching personal attacks against Imran Khan on a point of order.

Then, Ghulam Sarwar Khan got into a shouting match with Capt Mohammad Safdar after the former praised the court’s decision to oust Nawaz Sharif as prime minister.

But when the deputy speaker gave the floor to the PM’s son-in-law, the MNA from Mansehra responded by saying: “If every court decision was accepted, four million people would not have shown up at [Mumtaz] Qadri’s funeral; they would not call Zulfikar Ali Bhutto a martyr.”

He recalled other judicial decisions from Pakistan’s history that, he said, had derailed democracy in the country. He also took personal offence at Mr Sarwar’s implication that Mr Sharif was a “thief”, saying that his leader’s only crime was giving the country a network of motorways, or realising the dream of a ‘nuclear Pakistan’.

Published in Dawn, August 9th, 2017