Daily Times

Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) lawmakers on Saturday submitted a resolution in the Lower House against PPP Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, demanding that the opposition leader apologise for his remarks criticising the National Assembly speaker, media reports said.

The resolution, which bore the signatures of Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi, Defence Minister Pervez Khattak, Human Rights Minsiter Shireen Mazari as well as Asad Umar and Shafqat Mehmood, stated that Bilawal had used ‘insulting words’ for Speaker Asad Qaiser.

Bilawal, in a press talk after the budget bill was passed by the National Assembly a day earlier, had accused the speaker of ‘running the House in a partisan manner’. He had gone on to call the speaker a ‘worker (naukar) of the government’ and criticised him for not issuing the production orders of MNAs Mohsin Dawar and Ali Wazir, who are currently under detention.

“Such a personalised attack on the speaker, the Custodian of the House, is an attack on the House and totally unacceptable,” the resolution read. “We demand an apology on the floor of the House.”

In response to the resolution against his remarks, Bilawal said, “Benazir [Bhutto] taught me to speak the truth and I will speak the truth.” “I have a lot of respect for the speaker,” he said in a media talk. “I wrote a letter to the speaker as the chairman of the human rights committee and received a receipt saying that my letter has been received with a stamp from the National Assembly. What are you going to call him when the speaker says on national TV that he did not receive any letter?” he asked.

Bilawal had earlier said that he sent multiple letters to the speaker urging him to issue production orders of Dawar and Wazir.

The PPP chairman further said that the budget has been passed without proper voting. “How can you take such a big decision based on a voice vote?” he asked. “Their [the government’s] biggest problem is that I called them liars and selected. They are not bothered by the economic murder of the masses,” he complained.