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ISLAMABAD: As the ruling coalition seemed to be closing up its ranks against new political challenges, Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani angrily told the opposition in the National Assembly on Friday not to overblow what his government calls a fabricated memorandum critical of Pakistan’s military leadership sent this summer to then US military chief and to better wait for an explanation sought from the country’s ambassador to Washington.
Some members of the opposition Pakistan Muslim League-N (PML-N), including opposition leader Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan, seemed to have eagerly swallowed the poorly drafted memo and claims by its author, a Pakistani-Aemrican businessman, that he acted at the behest of Ambassador Husain Haqqani as they demanded a joint session of parliament to clear up what one of them called “clouds hovering over Islamabad”.
While the prime minister stuck to his Monday’s remarks in the house in response to a speech by the opposition leader that he had summoned the ambassador to Islamabad for an explanation to the country’s leadership about the document sent in May to then-US joint chiefs of staff chairman Admiral Mullen and said that until then raising this point again in the house would only be “a waste of time”.
But Information and Broadcasting Minister Firdous Ashiq Awan earlier described the document authored by businessman Mansoor Ijaz as “engineered” and “fabricated” to bring about a “confrontation” between Paskistan’s state institutions.
And the chief whip of the ruling Pakidtan People’s Party and Religious Affairs Minister Khursheed Ahmed Shah, speaking after the prime minister had left the house, said whoever was involved in this “conspiracy” would be exposed.
The prime minister said there was “no justification” in raising the matter again after his reply on Monday about the document, whose text, as published in a national newspaper on Friday and which proposed US intervention to bring in a favourable “national security team” in Pakistan, contained faulty sentences although Mr Ijaz said in an interview with Dawn on Thursday that he had typed what he was told by Mr Haqqani, who has been a consummate journalist and a teacher in the Boston University.
He asked the opposition members not to see danger on every issue and said his government would carry out its constitutional duty to protect national institutions.
He ruled out any change of government before the next elections due in 2013, saying that “before that there will be no change through any unconstitutional or undemocratic means”.
Mr Gilani also assured the house that his government would “pick up all thorns” to ensure a “US-Pakistan relationship on equal footings”.
He left the house as senior PML-N member Sardar Mehtab Ahmed Khan rose to speak on the issue, but it was not clear whether it was a snub to the party that walked out on Thursday without listening to government response to criticism against it by the opposition leader over a labour demonstration outside the parliament or due to his frequent meetings these days with lawmakers of allied parties apparently to counter a PML-N campaign to force out his government.
PML-N lawmakers quoted passages from the published memorandum and a long purported transcript of messages exchanged between Mr Haqqani and Mr Ijaz about it to press the perceived urgency for a debate in a joint session of the National Assembly and Senate on what they saw as treasonable act of a confidant of President Asif Ali Zardari.
“This shows he was not acting on his own,” said PML-N member Ayaz Amir about the alleged conduct of Mr Haqqani while apparently pointing a finger at the president.
Chaudhry Nisar, who spoke much after the prime minister had left the house, described the memorandum episode as a “small reflection” of the present government’s mode of governance and threatened to charge-sheet the government inside and outside the house if it did not “differentiate between friends and enemies” of Pakistan.
The fag-end of the proceedings, before the house was adjourned until 5pm on Monday, also saw a government-opposition controversy over a prevailing shortage and high prices of fertilisers, with Chaudhry Nisar blaming it on the federal government because of dealerships allegedly given to favourites while Mr Khursheed Shah said provincial governments were responsible for 95 per cent of supplies while Islamabad was responsible only for imports constituting only five per cent of the supplies.
Mr Shah took on the opposition leader’s challenge to bring facts before the house on Monday and, while talking of “lakhs of bags (of urea) lying in godowns” in the opposition-ruled Punjab, he said: “We will catch five per cent and you catch 95 per cent.”
