AN interesting situation arose on Thursday over the issue of resignations of the opposition legislators as the National Assembly Secretariat issued notices to two lawmakers of PML(N) for verification of their resignations received through post and a similar notice issued by the Speaker of the KP Assembly to an MPA of the party. PML(N), however, strongly denied that any of its members had directly submitted resignations to Speakers, termed them as ‘fake’ and demanded the two Speakers to hold inquiry as to who was behind the incident.
The reports that the two MNAs have vanished after submission of their resignations to Speaker National Assembly remind one of the traditional tactics used on such occasions to foil moves and counter-moves. The Government, even before conducting an inquiry into the matter, prefers to taunt the PML(N) over lack of its credibility among its own members. Abbottabad and Mansehra are strongholds of PML(N) and the two members who allegedly tendered resignations directly to Speaker National Assembly are staunch and vocal members and supporters of the Party. Murtaza Javed Abbasi is the chief whip of the PML-N in the National Assembly and Muhammad Sajjad is the brother of retired Captain Muhammad Safdar, the spouse of PML-N Vice-President Maryam Nawaz and their desertion or deviation from the party policy was a remote possibility. This proposition also gains credibility as Sardar Aurangzeb Nalotha, MPA of PML(N) from Abbottabad has strongly denied having submitted his resignation to the Speaker of the Provincial Assembly, adding that he handed over resignation to the party leadership as per decision of the party. It is also beyond comprehension as to why MNAs and MPAs would directly submit their resignations to Speakers and accelerate the process of their acceptance when they were only required to symbolically deposit their resignations with the party leadership, which might or might not actually submit them to the Speakers of respective assemblies. In a related development, Chairman Pakistan People’s Party Bilawal Bhutto Zardari has alleged that his party legislators who have submitted their resignations to the leadership are under great pressure from unspecified forces. The entire episode confirms yet again that politics in Pakistan lacks transparency and rivals use both fair and unfair means to advance their agendas, forgetting that their short-sighted approach is doing harm to the democratic process itself. Why are we trying to disprove the firm belief of the father of the nation Quaid-i-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah that democracy was in the blood of the Muslims?
