ISLAMABAD, Apr 20 :Federal Minister for Information and Broadcasting Chaudhry Fawad Hussain on Tuesday said the government had fulfilled the agreement by presenting a resolution in the National Assembly where a parliamentary procedure had to be adopted.
Briefing media persons outside the Parliament House about the Federal Cabinet meeting chaired by Prime Minister Imran Khan, he said the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) had objected to the text of the resolution. Other parties had the right of disagreement and the government could not dictate to them, he added.
Special Assistant to the PM on Political Communication Shahbaz Gill also accompanied him during the media talk.
Fawad said whatever was to be done, had to be within the ambit of the 1973 Constitution. The decision of declaring Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP) as a proscribed organization could not be reversed, however its leadership had the option of going for an appeal.
“The government acts in accordance with the Constitution as no monarchy is in place in the country,” he remarked.
The minister said the cases against those, who had attacked the police personnel and martyred five of them, would not be withdrawn, which they would have to contest in the courts of law.
The minister said martyrdom of five policemen could not be forgotten, who had sacrificed their lives in line of duty, while 800 other personnel were attacked and wounded during the protests by the TLP.
Those arrested under the Maintenance of Public Order could be released by the government, he added.
Fawad strongly condemned the attitude of PML-N leader Shahid Khaqan Abbasi towards the National Assembly Speaker during the session.
It was unfortunate that he had been the country’s prime minister, but had always adopted a hypocritical attitude and did not know how to address the Speaker, he said talking to the media after the National Assembly session.
Referring to the PML-N leaders, Fawad said,” For them chairs have come down, they haven’t gone up and they have not reached these positions in terms of mental qualities.”
All the members should adopt a polite attitude in the Parliament, he stressed.
The minister expressed the hope that the PML-N itself would condemn Khaqan Abbasi’s statement against the Speaker.
Fawad said the national institutions were destroyed in the past when the opposition parties were in power.
The opposition parties, he said, tried their best to sell the PDM’s (Pakistan Democratic Movement) chooran (digestive mixture) and overthrow the government but failed. Their duplicity had rather been exposed as they were fighting for Islamabad and not for Islam, he added.
The minister said the Parliament should not be made a ‘wrestling arena’. The opposition should not make fun of the Parliament through their inappropriate words and acts, he added.
He accused the opposition leaders of having hypocritical conduct as they were posing that it were they who had the pain for all the problems of Pakistan in their hearts.
They first tried to create violent groups, but when they realized that it did not work, they tried to behave like hooligans as they did today, he added.
Offering an olive branch to the opposition, he said the government wanted an environment of decency.
He said it was during their (opposition parties) tenures of government that the state institutions were destroyed. The deterioration being witnessed in terms of economy, social attitudes and extremism, all was nurtured during their stints’ while Imran Khan had been at the helm of affairs for the last two and a half years.
To a question, the minister said the government had already tabled the electoral reforms bill in the Parliament and awaited the opposition’s viewpoint. Moreover, he said, the government also wanted to introduce reforms in the judicial system as a recent global report on justice system had shown that the people in Pakistan had the least trust in the judicial system.
He said when the NA Speaker was threatened, the common people would have the perception that the Parliament was the institution which did not do any serious business.
The minister pointed out that during protests on Sunday last, some 250,000 tweets were monitored, 70 percent of them were projected and spread at a massive scale through a software from India. The government had the concern that foreign forces had jumped into such events, he added.