LARKANA: Pakistan Peoples Party Sindh president Nisar Ahmed Khuhro has reacted strongly to Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz PML-N vice president Maryam Nawaz’s statement regarding her party’s reluctance to move a non-confidence motion against Prime Minister Imran Khan.

“I congratulate her [Maryam Nawaz] for allowing two more years to Imran Khan’s government on the will of establishment,” Mr Khuhro remarked in a press statement issued here on Friday. By describing [PPP proposed] in-house change through no-confidence motion “a move under the supervision of establishment”, she had granted it [the PTI government] a breathing space for two more years, he said. “It tantamount to imposing Imran Khan on the nation for two years,” he added.

“We want to get rid of this unpopular government immediately,” he said, and insisted that the best way and the only option was to oust it through a no-confidence motion against the PM it the National Assembly,” he said.

Reminds her of PML-N’s move to oust PPP govt in 1989

Mr Khuhro wondered that general elections were due in the year 2023 but the PML-N leader appeared still not ready to support a no-confidence motion, an in-house change or a long march against the PTI government. He claimed that the masses, facing the worst-ever price hike, wanted immediate departure of this government.

He wondered why under these circumstances the PML-N was acting in a manner that only helped government to prolong its rule. “Will it [PML-N] sit idle waiting for the 2023 elections?”

“When she says that [the proposed] no-confidence motion has supervision of the establishment, she makes others to believe that her party is paving the way for Imran Khan’s government to comfortably rule over the country for two more years,” he said, and cautioned he that the PML-N leadership was answerable to the masses for having this kind of approach.

The senior PPP leader reminded Maryam Nawaz that it was her party that had brought in a no-confidence motion against the then democratically elected government of PPP, and sought her comment on the role of establishment in the move. “Why is she today calling a no-confidence motion against Imran Khan a move having supervision of establishment?’ he argued.

She must tell people that who was on the back [of PML-N] when the no-confidence motion was tabled against the PPP government, which had come to power after martial law. “Who had lent support to the move [no-confidence motion],” he asked.

Mr Khuhro said it was a PPP government that had done away with the Article 58(2-b) that had empowered a head of state to send elected governments packing. “Why the PML-N had not buried it despite having enjoyed a two-thirds majority in the house in 1991. The nation wants to know that who the establishment supports,” he argued.

Turning to recent passage of the bill on use of Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs), along with other electoral reforms, Mr Khuhro repeated his party’s view that it was [PTI’s] strategy for pre-poll rigging. He said ensuring transparency in elections was the responsibility of the Election Commission of Pakistan and without its approval, introducing EVMs tantamount to attack on the independence of the ECP.

“We will challenge it [the bill] at all forums,” he said.

Published in Dawn, November 20th, 2021