Archives for July 2015

PTI’s National Assembly Members Should be Deseated?

JUI (Fazalur Rahman) and MQM has raised a motion in the National Assembly that membership of the PTI members in National Assembly should be terminated because they were absent from the parliament for more than forty days.
This is a valid question but why these two parties or others for that matter did not raise this question earlier? There seems to be a couple of reasons.

Before we go into that detail please let us give our opinion on the subject.

Short and straightforward answer is if the constitution and the national assembly rules say that membership will be terminated in the situation facing presently then the membership of PTI members should be terminated. Simple as that.

It should not be the decision of any individuals or combined by vote or Nawaz Sharif as he is trying to do.

Nawaz Sharif has called a meeting today (July 29, 2015) of parliamentary leaders of all the political parties represented in the parliament. I wonder he did not call APC. Purpose of the meeting is to create a consensus on the decision. Decision means Nawaz Sharif’s wishes.

Nawaz Sharif would not like the termination of PTI membership simply he is afraid that PMLN may not win those seats. That will strengthen PTI’s position and political image and at the same time it will weaken PMLN’s position.

Nawaz Sharif will persuade party leaders not to de-seat PTI members. Since Nawaz Sharif has always supported MQM and JUI (F) they will not have any problem going with Nawaz Sharif. PPP does not care but they will also not like PTI be eliminated from parliament and there are by-elections for those seats.

Though they have initiated this motion to de-seat PTI members but actually they don’t want that to happen. They don’t want to go in by-elections. And who knows PTI may decide not to participate in by-elections, if they happen. That will be very embarrassing for Nawaz Sharif.

Coming back to the question why MQM and JUI(F) raised this motion in the parliament. Simply because of personal animosity otherwise if it was a matter of principle then they should have forced this motion at that time when PTI was absent from the assembly.

Another possibility could be that Nawaz Sharif has initiated this exercise through MQM and JUI(F). He has done that previously when Khawaja Asif spoke against Pak Army and PTI in the national assembly where he used very abusive language in the presence of Nawaz Sharif. Nawaz Sharif uses other people to take his personal revenge.

In PMLN the more abusive language you use particularly against Imran Khan and PTI you will be considered more loyal to Nawaz Sharif. So much so Nawaz Sharif has appointed a minister specifically to take care of Imran Khan and PTI, namely Pervez Rasheed. His job title should be Minister for Anti Imran Khan and PTI. Others in the same rank are Khawaja Asif, Khawaja Sa’ad Rafiq, etc. Then there are other actors at lower ranks, Ahsan Iqbal, Zaeem Qadari and Daniyal Aziz etc. A new rising star is Talal Chaudary, the prince. He is also trying to compete with top stars of PMLN. He consider himself crown prince.