ISLAMABAD: After getting “ditched” for a second time in less than three months by a “group of six independents” sitting on the opposition benches in the Senate, a number of Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) lawmakers now want their leadership to take action against these senators who had supported Yousuf Raza Gilani at the time of his nomination as the opposition leader and caused a rift within the opposition’s alliance.

“The parties in the opposition must carry out a purge of the soft-at-heart members and those senators who sit on the opposition benches but vote for the treasury,” said PPP Senator Raza Rabbani in a statement on Saturday, a day after the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) government narrowly managed to get the crucial State Bank of Pakistan (Amendment) Bill passed from the opposition-controlled Senate.

“Yesterday (Friday) was a collective day of shame for the parliament, in particular the Senate, when it passed a document of surrender, a document which financially makes Pakistan a colony of the international donors and imperialists,” said Mr Rabbani.

“The history and future generations of Pakistan will not forgive us -- the parliamentarians for this act,” he said.

Party wants to get these members removed from committees’ chairmanship

According to Mr Rabbani, it was also a sad day as it once again saw the opposition in the Senate crumbled, despite having a majority.

“This joke has gone far enough,” he said in an apparent reference to the six independent senators led by Dilawar Khan, who had been sitting on the opposition benches, but always voted for the government.

Despite having a clear majority in the 100-member Senate, the opposition on Friday failed to prevent the passage of the controversial SBP bill which was passed with a mere one-vote majority. At least eight opposition senators, including opposition leader Yusuf Raza Gilani, skipped the session, while at least four members of the Dilawar Khan-group voted in favour of the government bill.

The opposition had earlier faced a similar defeat on four bills in the Senate on November 19 when members of the same independents’ group had voted in support of the government.

The six independent senators elected in 2018 had been sitting on the treasury benches before Senate elections in March last year and all of a sudden they submitted an application to the Senate chairman seeking allocation of seats on the opposition benches.

They later through a letter to the Senate chairman supported Mr Gilani for the opposition leader’s office for which the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) had already nominated Azam Nazeer Tarar.

Five members of this group were enjoying privileges as chairmen of various committees which they got on the opposition’s quota as a reward for their support to Mr Gilani.

Interestingly, all these independents had voted for Mr Sanjrani in the elections, only days before their decision to sit on the opposition benches.

Other members of the independents’ group are Ahmed Khan, Kauda Babar and Naseebullah Bazai from Balochistan and Hidayatullah Khan and Hilalur Rehman from the erstwhile Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata).

During a heated exchange of arguments with PPP chairman Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari in the National Assembly on June 30 last year, Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi had stated that it was the government which through its six men had helped Mr Gilani get the opposition leader’s slot.

A number of PPP leaders now admit that it was a wrong decision of their leadership to get the support of the six independents and then facilitating the appointment of five of them as chairmen of the committees.

When other PPP lawmakers are expressing their views in their private conversations, outspoken Mustafa Nawaz Khokhar is the only party leader who is saying it openly that the party leadership should review its decision of seeking support of these senators.

The PPP leaders agree that the party cannot take any disciplinary action against these six independents as they are not bound to follow their directives, but the PPP leaders are unanimous in their demand that the opposition leader should at least write to the Senate chairman to allocate the chairmanship of the committees to these independents from the government quota so that the opposition could get the chairmanship of some more committees as per its share.

Commenting on the opposition’s defeat in the Senate, Mr Khokhar regretted that there was a group of people who sat on the opposition benches but they never voted for the opposition on crucial occasions. He said these people came to the opposition-fold when they were to get some benefits and then they voted for the government to get benefits from it as well.

Opposition Leader Yousuf Raza Gilani, while commenting on the situation, had previously stated that the decision to seek the support of these independents had been made by the party with a “majority vote” and that any decision about the future relationship with these independents would also be made by the leadership.

Published in Dawn, January 30th, 2022