Daily Times

Former Senate chairman Raza Rabbani on Tuesday threw a spanner in the works for the proposed committee to probe allegations of election rigging, complaining that senators should not have been excluded from the body.

Recalling that it had been the Senate that first demanded a probe into election rigging, Rabbani argued that it would have been more appropriate that a committee of the whole house (drawn from the Senate and National Assembly) would have been formed on the issue.

The opposition in the Senate had previously demanded that the upper house of parliament also be given representation in the committee.

“The purpose of a parliamentary committee is to have representatives from both houses,” Rabbani said on Tuesday, adding that the committee formed was not a ‘parliamentary committee’ but a ‘house committee’.

“The first session of the National Assembly has shaken the unity and supremacy of parliament,” Rabbani regretted.

He also criticised the government for excluding senators based on the argument that the Senate had no stake in the general election.

Rabbani said that by saying so, the foreign minister had besmirched the Constitution.

“Another black mark was also left on parliamentary tradition,” Rabbani added.

“The Senate will not be compelled to approve the recommendations made by this committee,” he warned.

The senator also criticised the delay in presidential elections, which he noted were held after the mandated 30 days.

He said that the Election Commission of Pakistan had violated the Constitution with this failure and a privilege motion should be moved against it.

Speaking in the Senate, Ameer Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) Pakistan, Senator Sirajul Haq has called upon the government to explain who was responsible for rise in the circular debt and what action it had proposed against the concerned institutions.

Sirajul Haq said that the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) government had also placed the entire burden of taxes on the poor. He said that those sitting in the assemblies thought all was well. However, he said that the state institutions were on the verge of collapse. He said the nation must know who had amassed illegal wealth and how much of it. He said that the PTI government would have to do justice to all.

Published in Daily Times, September 26^th 2018.