ISLAMABAD, Dec 29: Veteran politician Javed Hashmi said a formal goodbye to the National Assembly on Thursday with a double blow: blaming perceived wrongs of his former party and parliament for switching loyalties from the Pakistan Muslim League-N to Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehrik-i-Insaaf.

But the blow was only partly returned when he had left the house after delivering his resignation as lower house member as a consequence of leaving the PML-N and a long speech that showed him overtaken by a sense of self-righteousness.

The PML-N ignored the criticism, except for what appeared to be a personal attack on a prominent party lawmaker, and instead turned its anger to the government by staging a token walkout and promising more and stronger protests later against electricity cuts and gas shortages.

But the PPP chief whip, Religious Affairs Minister Khurshid Ahmed Shah, defended what he saw as an extraordinary performance of the present parliament during nearly four years of its life and also took the PML-N to task for proposing a one-month closure of Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) stations for January at a meeting of a house standing committee but protesting in the house against a similar statement attributed to Petroleum Minister Dr Asim Hussain.

Javed Hashmi resigned from the National Assembly seat he won in the 2008 election on PML-N ticket as a mandatory follow-up of his announcement to leave the party.

He had also announced in Sunday’s PTI public rally in Karachi that his daughter Maimoona Hashmi, elected on PML-N ticket to a reserved seat for women, would also resign. But it was not immediately clear whether she had submitted her resignation to the assembly secretariat though she had come to the house earlier in the evening with her father.

In what seemed to be a narrative of self-praise, Mr Hashmi recalled his role as an activist from the days of Pakistan’s first military ruler Field Marshal Ayub Khan to being a minister in General Ziaul Haq’s government for some time and then more prominent and longer association with the PML-N, which he said he preferred to terminate rather than “become a pile of earth in a room”.

This was reference to his complaint that he was no longer consulted by the party leadership.

Mr Hashmi saw little merit in the present parliament, saying “people are being disappointed with assemblies”, and pleaded for a fresh mandate, though he said they had a right to complete their five-year tenure.

Lawmakers of the government-allied Muttahida Qaumi Movement and some on the Pakistan Muslim League-Q and PPP benches cheered by desk-thumping as Mr Hashmi left the house, but those on PML-N benches kept silent before party member Hanif Abbasi — and later Zahid Hamid — clarified that it was not Mr Hamid but a PML-Q member who had allegedly tried to attack Ms Maimoona Hashmi during a protest in the previous National Assembly against Mr Hashmi’s arrest on the charge of trying to incite a mutiny.

Opposition leader Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan seemed unhappy with Deputy Speaker Faisal Karim Kundi, allowing a long time to Mr Hashmi for the speech and said PPP lawmakers and former minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi and Sardar Aseff Ahmed Ali, who too have joined the PTI, should be allowed an equal time to speak in the house because their resignations had not been accepted.

Mr Kundi said he would take no dictation in taking decisions and said Mr Qureshi, who has not come to the house since announcing his resignation last month, would be welcome to speak before the acceptance of the resignation. The chair said nothing about Sardar Aseff, who announced his decision to join the PTI on Dec 25, but is not known to have sent his resignation to the speaker.