ISLAMABAD: The main opposition Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) has started consultations within the party to decide who will head the powerful Public Accounts Committee (PAC) of the National Assembly, expecting that the PML-N government will offer the position to it in accordance with the Charter of Democracy (CoD).
Sources in the party told Dawn that after nominating Syed Khurshid Ahmed Shah as the leader of opposition, the PPP leadership believed that another person should be appointed as the PAC chairman so that the party which had been routed in the May 11 elections could hold two important positions.
Though the party has not finalised any name so far, the sources said, the leadership was considering the name of Dr Azra Afzal Pechuho, a sister of President Asif Ali Zardari, for the post.
When contacted, Leader of Opposition in the National Assembly Syed Khurshid Shah said the party was yet to hold any formal discussion on the issue. He said the issue of the appointment of the PAC chairman would come after the constitution of parliamentary committees by the speaker.
It may be recalled that for the first time in the country’s history, the previous PPP-led coalition government had appointed former leader of opposition Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan as chairman of the PAC in line with the CoD that had been signed by former PPP chairperson Benazir Bhutto and PML-N chief Nawaz Sharif in May 2006 in London.
In November 2011, Chaudhry Nisar announced at a news conference that he was resigning from the PAC in protest against the “controversial decision” of then prime minister Yousuf Raza Gilani to appoint Akhtar Buland Rana as the country’s new auditor general. He had alleged that the PPP-led ruling coalition had decided to make the PAC ineffective because the body was about to take up the audit reports of the accounts and expenditures of the first year of the government.
When Chaudhry Nisar did not respond to repeated requests by the government to nominate another lawmaker of his party in his place, the PPP nominated its own lawmaker Nadeem Afzal Chan as the PAC chairman.