Senate questions President’s credibility

[pkpatriotic]

Senate questions President?s credibility
By Raja Asghar
Tuesday, 28 Oct, 2008

ISLAMABAD: Both foes and friends raised questions about President Asif Ali Zardari’s credibility as the Senate began debating his last month’s address to parliament on Monday, after demanding ‘more effective measures’ by the government to stop US drone attacks into the Pakistani tribal areas.

A demonstration of consensus in passing a strongly-worded resolution that condemned frequent deadly missile attacks by US-led forces in Afghanistan against perceived militant hideouts proved short-lived after a former federal minister launched an attack on the president by accusing him and the PPP-led coalition government of violating pledges made in his Sept 20 address to a joint sitting of both houses of parliament.

Leader of house Raza Rabbani put up a vociferous defense soon after Senator Nisar A. Memon of the PML-Q, one-time confidant of ex-president Pervez Musharraf, opened the opposition attack, rejecting charges of a disregard of parliament, of political vengeance and undermining national interests in foreign relations such as with India and the United States.

But what appeared to be an early damage-control move by Rabbani, who also warned Musharraf of unspecified if he dared to enter politics, failed to stop even the coalition ally Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam (JUI) and half-ally Pakistan Muslim Muslim League-N (PML-N) from pointing out the president’s broken promises about the restoration of deposed judges and a perceived delay in stripping the presidency of its controversial powers.

The attack on the former president came in response of Memon’s allegations that the government was trying to interfere in the PML-Q affairs by seeking to change its leadership and unconfirmed newspaper reports of possible moves to induct Mr Musharraf as the head of the formerly ruling party that he helped form before the 2002 elections.

‘If he (Musharraf) any such policy in his mind then he should be ready to face the consequences … of his crimes against the people of Pakistan and the constitution … and face the two-year ban’ (for retired government servants to seek an elected public office ), Rabbani said.

Such a move, he said, would an attempt to reverse the verdict of people in the Feb 18 election that, he added, ‘people of Pakistan will not allow to happen’.

He said the Musharraf government had capitulated in the aftermath of 9/11 while ‘we corrected’ the situation.

PML-N parliamentary group leader in the Senate Ishaq Dar, whose party quit the ruling coalition in August mainly over Zardari’s failure to honour his commitment as the PPP leader for the restoration of the deposed judges, said it was ‘still not late’ to restore the pre-Nov 3 judiciary.

He also called for an early implementation of the president’s call for the formation of an all-parties parliamentary committee to slash presidential powers as contemplated by the famous Charter of Democracy signed by the assassinated PPP leader Benazir Bhutto and PML-N leader Nawaz Sharif in 2006.

Dar, who briefly remained served as finance minister in the coalition government, rejected Memon’s remarks blaming the present\economic crisis on the coalition, which he said only inherited a ‘gross mess’ from the previous regime as the second most serious challenge after terrorism and the second of its kind after one the country faced following its 1998 nuclear detonations.

He said Pakistan seemed to be ‘re-trapped’ by what he called a Western agenda to disintegrate it and urged the government to seek home-grown solutions rather than opt for IMF conditions for a bailout and warned against the ‘disaster’ of raising grain prices to international levels with so low per capita income.

Coalition ally ANP’s parliamentary leader Mohammad Adeel praised Zardari for offering to have his powers curtailed but said it was now for the government to bring constitutional amendments.

But he regretted the alleged disregard of Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani’s directives for austerity by his ministers such as for the use of maximum 1600cc cars and ended his speech with a complaint about the absence of any mention of nationalist leaders like the late Abdul Ghaffar Khan in Zadari’s speech and a rhetoric warning: ‘If there will be no mention of nationalist leaders, we will never accept Pakistan’s history.’

The treasury benches were particularly piqued by a biting criticism from an otherwise suave JUI Senator Liaqat Ali Bungalzai who changed a famous couplet of poet Ghalib to express his lack of trust in the president because of the promises ‘we are still waiting’ to be fulfilled.

Rabbani earlier said Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi had informed him that the US ambassador in Islamabad would be called to the foreign ministry for lodging a protest over drone attacks before presenting the resolution that only ‘strongly’ condemned what it called ‘missile attacks by US drones in Pakistani territory resulting in immense loss to life’ but said nothing about the presence of foreign militants stated to be targets of such attacks.

The resolution called such attacks as ‘most unfortunate’ that ‘constitute a gross violation of our national sovereignty and territory’ and said ‘continued incursions into Pakistan’s territory are harming the government’s efforts to seek a political solution though dialogue’.
It said the house regarded such steps as ‘efforts to undermine’ parliament’s unanimous resolution on the issue in a recent in-camera session and declared that ‘attacks inside Pakistan territory are unacceptable and the government should take more effective measures to stop them’.