ISLAMABAD, June 3: All major parties made high-sounding vows on Monday to resist future dictators as the new National Assembly elected nominees of the majority Pakistan Muslim League-N (PML-N) party as house speaker and deputy speaker, who got votes also from the main opposition party.
The Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), which headed the previous coalition government for a full five-year term as the largest single party in the then lower house but was reduced to nearly a third of its size in the disastrous May 11 elections, said it had withdrawn its own candidates and voted for the PML-N’s Sardar Ayaz Sadiq for speaker and Murtaza Javed Abbasi for deputy speaker as a gesture not to make their offices controversial.
But the two candidates faced a token contest in the secret ballot from Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehrik-i-Insaf (PTI), which emerged as the third largest party in the new house, and the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), a PPP ally in the previous government.
Mr Sadiq, a soft-spoken businessman from Lahore who earned some across-the-board respect for his work in the previous house’s committees, polled 258 votes out of the 313 lawmakers who voted, defeating PTI’s Shaharyar Afridi and MQM’s S.A. Iqbal Qadri , who got 38 and 23 votes respectively while one vote was declared invalid, in the election overseen by outgoing speaker Fehmida Mirza of the PPP.
Mr Abbasi also won by the same margin against PTI’s Munazza Hassan and MQM’s Kishwar Zehra though one vote less was cast in the deputy speaker’s election, which was overseen by Mr Sadiq after he was administered oath as speaker by Dr Mirza.
Earlier, possible after some backstage contact, the PPP withdrew the candidatures of its veteran lawmaker Nawab Yousuf Talpur from Sindh for speaker and Ghulam Rasool Koreja from Punjab for deputy speaker Just before the outgoing speaker called for balloting for the new speaker after administering oath to some more new members of the house — 301 had taken oath on the first day of the session on Satuday — Mehmood Khan Achakzai, chief of the Pakhtunkhwa Milli Awami Party (PkMAP), created a stir in the house by raising a question as to how the assembly could fulfil its oath to defend the country’s constitution while the house was “full of people who had supported the previous dictator”.
He sought a commitment by all parties never to support violation of the constitution, and said: “At least Nawaz League, the PPP and PTI should make a pledge not to give membership to any person who had supported dictatorship.”
That seemed to have caused some unease on PML-N front benches, with some senior leaders apparently seeking advice from Mr Sharif about how to respond, though it was not clear whether the swipe was directed at some individuals or at one or more parties where numerous former loyalists of military dictators like General Mohammad Zia-ul-Haq and General Pervez Musharraf had taken refuge, won election with their tickets or joined them after winning the election as independents.
But the outburst of Mr Achakzai, whose party is about to be part of a coalition government in Balochistan province along with PML-N, seemed likely to encourage finger-pointing at PML-N leadership as well as some likely future cabinet ministers.
While Mr Sharif, the prime minister-in-waiting and a one-time protégé of Gen Zia, remained quiet, two of his close colleagues, Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan and Khawaja Mohammad Asif sprang to action to voice agreement with Mr Achakzai but they seemed to deflect his call for an immediate pledge.
Chaudhry Nisar, who was leader of opposition in the previous house, recalled that oaths had been taken and broken for the past 65 years of Pakistan’s life, and called “self-analysis” and respecting every lawmaker’s mandate in the present difficult period facing the country.
Khawaja Asif earlier called for making a “break with the past” and, while apparently condoning what had happened in the past, said “some step must be taken” in this respect Mr Amin Fahim, the PPP’s parliamentary leader in the house, spoke twice, recalling sacrifices of his party and its leaders like Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and Benazir Bhutto to oppose dictatorship and said his party would “stand like a wall” against any future attempt to impose dictatorship.
While pledges to oppose dictatorship also came from PTI leaders Javed Hashmir and Shah Mahmood Qureshi, former prime minister Zafarullah Khan Jamali, who, when in office, once proudly declared Gen Musharraf as “my boss” and joined the PML-N only recently after being elected an independent, seemed quite angry with the discourse outside the day’s agenda and said: “We have also come here with some mandate and now we are being asked to seek another mandate.”
Disagreement was apparent also from General Zia’s son Ejaz-ul-Haq, who has assured support to PML-N after being elected to the house on his own from Punjab, as he saw “nothing new” in Mr Achakzai’s “sentiment” and said the constitution also required protection of the country’s independence and sovereignty “which are now under attack”.
In another speech afterwards, Mr Achakzai demanded an official inquiry now into the May 12, 2007, massacre in Karachi during a visit there by Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry, then under suspension, to implement a commitment made by an All Parties Dermocratic Movement conference held in London before the 2008 elections with participants including Mr Sharif, PTI chief Imran Khan and the late Jamaat-i-Islami leader Qazi Hussain Ahmed.
In remarks before leaving her chair, Dr Mirza recalled achievements of the house under her stewardship, as the Islamic world’s first parliamentary Speaker, like historic constitutional amendments and “creating a balance” between political and state institutions, and said she was handing over to a new speaker with a “sense of satisfaction”.
Mr Sadiq too paid tribute to his predecessor’s wisdom and said he too would run the house impartially and ensure high efficiency and austerity.
He later adjourned the house until 11am on Wednesday, when the house will elect the new prime minister, for which nomination papers must be filed by 2pm on Tuesday.