ISLAMABAD: Members from the treasury and the opposition benches on Friday exchanged salvos in the Senate over the arrest of Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM) workers with the government accusing the opposition of strengthening the enemy’s narrative while the opposition claiming that it was being pushed to the wall.

Winding up discussion in the upper house on the crackdown against opposition workers, Minister of State for Parlia­mentary Affairs Ali Mohammad Khan slammed former prime minister Nawaz Sharif for his tirade against the army and the PDM for raising slogans of ‘free Balo­chistan’ during the Quetta rally.

“Criticism of the army only widens the fault lines at a time when Pakistan is faced with a hybrid war,” he said.

Minister says crackdown on opposition not govt’s policy

He chided Nawaz Sharif by saying that if he had the courage, his party should not have supported the legislation to extend the army chief’s term.

The minister said the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) had only launched a crackdown against politicians facing corruption cases.

He denied arrests of political workers and said crackdown against them was not government’s policy, adding that Prime Minister Imran Khan had taken up this matter in the cabinet and had decided that the opposition should be allowed to hold political rallies.

He said there was some kind of mishandling in Punjab at the local level in the early phase of the opposition’s movement but later it was given a free hand.

Mr Khan also criticised the opposition, reminding it of the Model Town incident and the attack on the Supreme Court building when PML-N was in power. “Don’t pick and choose,” he said.

The state minister said the prime minister would definitely visit Quetta and was not going there at the moment due to some reasons.

The opposition members claimed that the law enforcement agencies, on the instructions of Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI), were found involved in launching crackdown against hundreds of their political workers before PDM’s scheduled rallies across the country.

Earlier, opening the debate, Sassui Palijo of Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) said time was up and there was no room for talks with the government now.

She said the opposition’s movement was being taken as anti-state by the government, despite the fact that no opposition party had resorted to any illegally activity to move the PDM protest forward.

Ms Palijo regretted that the prime minister had not visited Quetta to listen to the demand of the families of the deceased.

“The prime minister should have gone there and then taken the Senate into confidence over the tragic incident in Mach,” she said, adding that there was frustration among the provinces over this incident.

She said the prime minister could find time to meet the team of the popular Turkish drama serial Ertugrul Ghazi but not visit Quetta.

PkMAP Senator Usman Khan Kakar said the PDM demands were democratic, but the government cracked down on its workers before every rally and registered cases against them.

He said the movement was struggling while remaining within the democratic parameters and following the ideology of non-violence, but the government was forcing people into rebellion and violence.

JUI-F leader Maulana Attaur Rehman regretted that the opposition leadership was being labelled RAW agents.

He said the opposition was not against the army and respected armymen performing duties on the borders.

He said the government should stop talking about performance of the past governments as it had been in power for more than two-and-a-half years now.

“We are not ready to accept NAB because it has only been established to defame politicians,” Maulana Rehman said.

He alleged that NAB did not take action against those politicians who joined the government after changing their loyalties.

Leader of the House Dr Shahzad Waseem referred to Lahore’s Model Town incident and alleged that the opposition was involved in cracking down on political workers when it was in government.

“We don’t want to suppress any democratic movement,” he said, adding that there were red lights as well.

He said when PDM would talk against the state and state institutions, it would be taken to task.

Leader of the Opposition in the House Raja Zafarul Haq disputed Senator Waseem’s claim and said it would be wrong to say that no political worker had been arrested.

“This statement is contrary to facts,” he added.

Published in Dawn, January 9th, 2021