The Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) on Wednesday created a rumpus in the National Assembly on the issue of Panamagate scam and disrupted the opening day’s proceedings of the winter session.The PTI lawmakers, who had returned to the house after ending their more than two months’ boycott of parliament, gathered in front of the speaker’s dais and raised full-throated slogans when he gave the floor to Railways Minister Khawaja Saad Rafiq, instead of PTI’s parliamentary leader Shah Mehmood Qureshi, after the speech of Leader of the Opposition Syed Khurshid Shah.Some of the members tore apart the copies of the agenda and other documents and flung them in the air in front of the dais of the speaker who kept refusing to give the floor to Mr Qureshi, saying he could not deny the government its right to respond to the points raised by Mr Shah.Besides the PTI lawmakers, independent MNA Jamshed Dasti was also seen active in raising anti-government slogans.The announcement by Speaker Sardar Ayaz Sadiq that he would not allow the opposition parties to move their privilege motions against the prime minister since the matter was “sub judice†before the court added fuel to the already aggravated situation and the PTI members refused to go back to their seats, despite repeated requests by the chair. Interestingly, members of the main opposition Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) did not join the protesting PTI lawmakers and remained on their seats throughout the time. A number of federal ministers, including Finance Minister Ishaq Dar and Law Minister Zahid Hamid, besides Deputy Speaker Murtaza Javed Abbasi went to the opposition benches and asked the PPP leaders to help them bring the house in order. But all their efforts were in vain and the PTI members kept raising slogans against the prime minister. Anticipating the opposition’s protest, the ruling Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) had ensured maximum presence of its members, and unlike the past, several key ministers, including Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar, were also present in the house.At one point, the assembly was giving a look of a fish market when the treasury members, led by minority MNA Khalil George, also started raising slogans against PTI chairman Imran Khan, who was not present in the house.The speaker asked the railways minister several times to start his speech, but the latter could not do so due to the noisy protest by the opposition members.Since the 2013 elections, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) has been following the politics of complaints and protests against the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) government. Soon after the elections in 2013, Khan started an agitation against the government on the basis of unsubstantiated accusations that the elections were massively rigged but he failed to get resignation of prime minister. It would be better for the PTI that it should work for the stability of democracy along with other political parties. We hope that the PTI would review its strategy and play its role as a genuine opposition and work for the progress and prosperity of the country.
