HYDERABAD: Pakistan Peoples Party Parliamentarians information secretary Shazia Marri has said that Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf government is undermining the Supreme Court.

She said Article 226 of the Constitutions deals with secret ballot for “all elections” except for prime minister and chief ministers.

Ms Marri was speaking at a press conference at the residence of PPP district president Saghir Qureshi here on Sunday. PPP Sindh information secretary Aajiz Dhamrah, divisional information secretary Aftab Khanzada, district information secretary Ehsan Abro and others were also present.

“The PTI government insists this article doesn’t deal with the Senate vote and it moved a presidential reference to the Supreme Court for clarity. While the matter is sub judiced the PTI promulgated an ordinance,” she said. “In fact, the government is dictating judges and pre-empting its verdict on the reference.”

She expressed the hope the SC would think independently and would not be influenced by the Senate presidential ordinance on open vote.

She said after promulgation of the ordinance onus was now on judiciary as the government had given an impression through it that since it had taken a decision.

“It will be an unfortunate moment for everyone if, God forbids, judiciary gets influenced or taken pressure of the government,” she said.

She added government is hell-bent on making institutions controversial.

“Undemocratic forces are interfering in parliamentary business and proceedings,” she said, adding the PPP would not allow the rollback of 18th Amendment.

PDM’s public meeting tomorrow

She said she was delighted to see enthusiasm among people for the Feb 9 public meeting of the Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM).

She said the PDM event would break record of public meetings held in 1986, 2007 and 2017.

She accused ruling PTI of making courts controversial after making security institutions controversial.

She said everyone knew how inept ruling PTI was surviving and it had now targeted judiciary. “I will ask institutions respectfully, will you play in the hands of the government,” she asked.

She said the PTI was undermining independence of judiciary while PPP stood for this independence.

She said Imran Khan used to say parliamentarians were bribed through development of funds but he was now himself paying the “bribe of Rs500m to parliamentarians” who were supposed to vote in the Senate election.

She said PTI didn’t care about discussing draft constitutional amendment bill on the Senate vote.

She said the foreign minister conceded that the PTI lacked number in parliament, but it wanted to expose the opposition. She said when PTI didn’t have the numbers it should have discussed it with the opposition but it got the draft bill passed from the Senate standing committee in just 12 minutes.

The PPP leader believed the open voting in the Senate election would affect calculations of transferable votes.

She said smaller and nationalist parties, which have their perspectives, would face difficulties.

Published in Dawn, February 8th, 2021