Like a pack of hungry wolves, parliamentarians from the government benches had been waiting for the right moment. As a joint session opened on Monday, they pounced on their favourite prey, and the usual smirk on Imran Khan’s face vanished all of a sudden.
The PTI chairman and his men were not expecting rose petals, but they did not know the PML-Nawaz would be so brazen.
The session, called to discuss the war in Yemen, turned into a political battleground itself. The MQM hurled the first stone.
Last August, the PTI had launched a street agitation against the government. The party’s lawmakers stopped going to the assemblies. They held the longest sit-in outside the parliament. Mr Khan’s container monologues irked his opponents. Throughout the Dharna adventure, he was sarcastic and judgmental, and tried to kill several birds with one stone.
“Leadership is something you earn, something you’re chosen for. You can’t come in yelling, ‘I’m your leader!’ If it happens, it’s because the other guys respect you,” said Ben Roethlisberger, an American football player. Mr Khan is not likely a big fan of American football.
The PTI chairman and his followers believed the parliament was illegitimate because it came into being through a sham election. Yet they had the audacity to return to the same concert of corrupt and dishonest politicians. The stance Mr Khan and his comrades assumed for the last seven months made them cross certain limits. They hurled abuses and allegations, paralysed the government and attacked state institutions.
A recently leaked recording of a phone conversation between Mr Khan and Dr Arif Alvi revealed how desperate he was for Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s resignation. He even invited the MQM to join his ‘tsunami’, forgetting his own words that “the MQM was a bunch of criminals and assassins.”
The brickbats Mr Khan and his men received on the opening day of parliament’s joint session were not out of the blue. It was the payback time. After the outburst of MQM’s Farooq Sattar, defence minister Khawaja Asif took it upon himself to show Mr Khan the mirror.
“You should be ashamed,” the defence minister would say, amid calls for calm by National Assembly Speaker Ayaz Sadiq.
He asked the speaker to have every member of the PTI stand up and confirm whether or not they had tendered their resignations. Maulana Fazlur Rehman and leaders of the Awami National Party also contributed to the grilling.
The PTI chairman and his companions stayed silent, though visibly uncomfortable against the frontal attacks. For the past few months, they had the luxury of having a microphone, a stage, a powerful audio system, and the entire media to say whatever they wanted to, against whoever they wanted to. They did not spare the People’s Party.
But the opposition leaders in the Senate and the National Assembly, PPP’s Aitzaz Ahsan and Syed Khurshid Shah, were not happy with what happened.
In a brief chat with the media, the PTI chairman defended his position. “I still believe this assembly is illegitimate. It came into being through a rigged election. We returned to the house after we managed to have a judicial commission probe the rigging allegations,” he explained.
But Mr Khan committed a tactical error. The government has already issued an ordinance to constitute the judicial commission consisting of Supreme Court judges. It is supposed to complete its investigation within 45 days of its constitution. Analysts say Mr Khan should have waited for 45 more days before returning to the parliament.
The PTI chairman was sure that his mandate had been stolen in 2013 general elections and that he would stand vindicated when the judicial commission would finish its probe. What is the point of returning to a house which, in Mr Khan’s opinion, will cease to exist very soon?
Under the agreement between the government and the PTI, the prime minister will dissolve the National Assembly if rigging allegations are proven.
The MQM, the ANP and the JUI-F have rejected the judicial commission itself. They ask a valid question: If the PML-N stole the mandate of the PTI, why should they be punished for the crimes committed by the ruling party? The MQM even thought of challenging the constitution of the judicial commission in the Supreme Court.
The PML-N was always divided on what to do with the resignations of PTI legislators. Some party leaders wanted to get rid of them and hold by-elections on the vacant seats. Many others were opposed to that idea.
Khawaja Asif’s outburst on the floor of the National Assembly was a manifestation of the anger among the PML-N leadership. A senior leader of the party, Syed Zafar Ali Shah, challenged the return of PTI lawmakers to the parliament in Islamabad High Court. They could not return to the house after having resigned, he prayed.
In the coming weeks, the political temperature in Islamabad is likely to stay high. In Karachi too, the by-election on NA-246 has become a flashpoint. The results will show if the MQM has actually lost its popularity, or whether PTI’s claims are nothing more than vociferous rhetoric.
Shahzad Raza is an Islamabad-based journalist
Twitter: @shahzadrez
The PTI chairman and his men were not expecting rose petals, but they did not know the PML-Nawaz would be so brazen.
The session, called to discuss the war in Yemen, turned into a political battleground itself. The MQM hurled the first stone.
Last August, the PTI had launched a street agitation against the government. The party’s lawmakers stopped going to the assemblies. They held the longest sit-in outside the parliament. Mr Khan’s container monologues irked his opponents. Throughout the Dharna adventure, he was sarcastic and judgmental, and tried to kill several birds with one stone.
“Leadership is something you earn, something you’re chosen for. You can’t come in yelling, ‘I’m your leader!’ If it happens, it’s because the other guys respect you,” said Ben Roethlisberger, an American football player. Mr Khan is not likely a big fan of American football.
The PTI chairman and his followers believed the parliament was illegitimate because it came into being through a sham election. Yet they had the audacity to return to the same concert of corrupt and dishonest politicians. The stance Mr Khan and his comrades assumed for the last seven months made them cross certain limits. They hurled abuses and allegations, paralysed the government and attacked state institutions.
A recently leaked recording of a phone conversation between Mr Khan and Dr Arif Alvi revealed how desperate he was for Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s resignation. He even invited the MQM to join his ‘tsunami’, forgetting his own words that “the MQM was a bunch of criminals and assassins.”
The brickbats Mr Khan and his men received on the opening day of parliament’s joint session were not out of the blue. It was the payback time. After the outburst of MQM’s Farooq Sattar, defence minister Khawaja Asif took it upon himself to show Mr Khan the mirror.
“You should be ashamed,” the defence minister would say, amid calls for calm by National Assembly Speaker Ayaz Sadiq.
He asked the speaker to have every member of the PTI stand up and confirm whether or not they had tendered their resignations. Maulana Fazlur Rehman and leaders of the Awami National Party also contributed to the grilling.
The PTI chairman and his companions stayed silent, though visibly uncomfortable against the frontal attacks. For the past few months, they had the luxury of having a microphone, a stage, a powerful audio system, and the entire media to say whatever they wanted to, against whoever they wanted to. They did not spare the People’s Party.
But the opposition leaders in the Senate and the National Assembly, PPP’s Aitzaz Ahsan and Syed Khurshid Shah, were not happy with what happened.
In a brief chat with the media, the PTI chairman defended his position. “I still believe this assembly is illegitimate. It came into being through a rigged election. We returned to the house after we managed to have a judicial commission probe the rigging allegations,” he explained.
But Mr Khan committed a tactical error. The government has already issued an ordinance to constitute the judicial commission consisting of Supreme Court judges. It is supposed to complete its investigation within 45 days of its constitution. Analysts say Mr Khan should have waited for 45 more days before returning to the parliament.
The PTI chairman was sure that his mandate had been stolen in 2013 general elections and that he would stand vindicated when the judicial commission would finish its probe. What is the point of returning to a house which, in Mr Khan’s opinion, will cease to exist very soon?
Under the agreement between the government and the PTI, the prime minister will dissolve the National Assembly if rigging allegations are proven.
The MQM, the ANP and the JUI-F have rejected the judicial commission itself. They ask a valid question: If the PML-N stole the mandate of the PTI, why should they be punished for the crimes committed by the ruling party? The MQM even thought of challenging the constitution of the judicial commission in the Supreme Court.
The PML-N was always divided on what to do with the resignations of PTI legislators. Some party leaders wanted to get rid of them and hold by-elections on the vacant seats. Many others were opposed to that idea.
Khawaja Asif’s outburst on the floor of the National Assembly was a manifestation of the anger among the PML-N leadership. A senior leader of the party, Syed Zafar Ali Shah, challenged the return of PTI lawmakers to the parliament in Islamabad High Court. They could not return to the house after having resigned, he prayed.
In the coming weeks, the political temperature in Islamabad is likely to stay high. In Karachi too, the by-election on NA-246 has become a flashpoint. The results will show if the MQM has actually lost its popularity, or whether PTI’s claims are nothing more than vociferous rhetoric.
Shahzad Raza is an Islamabad-based journalist
Twitter: @shahzadrez