Islamabad, 12th March 2022: Parliamentary Leader of the PPP in the Senate, Senator Sherry Rehman said, “By no stretch of the imagination can the Speaker of the National Assembly make blatantly partisan statements about the vote of no-confidence (VONC). This is a constitutional instrument he is trying to obstruct. This act by itself renders him unfit to preside over any such session. By saying that the VONC is a foreign conspiracy, is he suggesting the PTI government was only in place due to foreign support? Is he a PTI office-bearer or a Speaker of Pakistan’s National Assembly where he is supposed to safeguard the integrity of the outcome by remaining neutral? By saying that the VONC will be defeated Asad Qaiser has betrayed his Office, and in my view cannot possibly preside over the House or process.”
She said, “The tactics the government is using to stop the VONC are completely illegitimate as per the constitution. Contrary to what the government claims, the constitution does not give the speaker the power to disqualify a member before voting. Members cannot be stopped from taking part in the parliamentary process nor can the Speaker prevent members from voting or disqualify them before the voting.”
She continued to say, “The recent speech by the Prime Minister indicates that he is on the offensive and ready for confrontation as made evident by the language which is egregiously inappropriate for the Premier of a country. After three and a half years of making claims that the government’s institutions remain unbiased and neutral, whilst boasting about the fair and just politics that the government engages in, Niazi has now made another sharp U-turn by saying that humans cannot remain neutral. Had anyone from the Opposition made these claims, members of the PTI government would have rebooted its propaganda machine to slander the members of the Opposition and yet they continue to make reckless comments with apparent impunity.”
She concluded by saying, “The PTI party seems to be operating from a place of deranged paranoia as they claim that the no-confidence motion was an international conspiracy against him and his party, the truth is that the government needs a reality check. The no-trust motion seems to have pushed the entire government over the edge of reason. The irony is that that actions of the government in the aftermath of the VONC only proves that the PTI is completely incompetent and incapable of governing a country.”
