Information Minister Fawad Chaudhry Thursday rejected the impression that the establishment was supporting the opposition, saying they continued to stand with the government as required under the Constitution. He made these remarks while replying to a reporter who asked if the opposition parties now had the establishment’s support in their bid to oust Prime Minister Imran Khan. “In our constitutional scheme, the army has to stay with the government. The army has to follow the Constitution, and it will follow the Constitution”, Fawad said. At the outset of his speech, the information minister said a meeting of the political committee was held earlier in the day where concerns were raised over a “campaign against the Pakistan Army”. In this regard, he referred to a statement by JUI-F chief Fazlur Rehman. A clip was then played at the press briefing in which Fazl was shown speaking at a press conference alongside PML-N President Shehbaz Sharif and PPP Co-Chairperson Asif Ali Zardari. The press conference was held earlier this week, hours after opposition parties submitted a no-confidence motion to the National Assembly Secretariat against the prime minister.
In the clip, Fazl was shown saying: “We also think about reforms for our institutions. The jurisdictions of all institutions have been defined in the Constitution and we want to move towards that so that such complains or questions never arise in the country again.” Commenting on Fazl’s statement, Chaudhry linked the mooted “reforms” with the opposition’s attempts to have “political control over the army”. The information minister alleged that PML-N supremo Nawaz Sharif had been trying in the past to control “the army just like the Punjab police”, saying these “reforms” would be a continuation of these efforts.
Fawad referred to the memogate scandal, which had surfaced after the publication of a secret memo asking Washington for help reining in the military during the PPP’s tenure in 2011. He further mentioned Dawn leaks, which occurred during the PML-N’s tenure in 2016. The matter pertained to publication of details of a high-level civil-military meeting discussing the issue of banned outfits operating in Pakistan, which quoted government officials warning the military leadership of international isolation if Pakistan failed to act against militants. Fawad said he was mentioning these incidents of the past to refresh people’s memories about the age-old ambitions of the current opposition parties to malign the Pakistan Army. Chaudhry dubbed the opposition’s move to seek a no-confidence against PM Imran a “political drama”, saying that “we want them to end before” March 23.
He said delegations from Muslim countries around the world would start arriving in Islamabad on March 21 to attend a meeting of the Organisation of Islamic Council’s foreign ministers. These foreign ministers, he said, would also attend the parade on March 23, on the occasion of Pakistan Day, to which representative of European countries were also invited. “So we want that that this political drama ends before that,” he said. He said the government was in touch with the PTI’s estranged leaders, Jahangir Khan Tareen and Aleem Khan, saying negotiation would continue and a united response would be given. The minister said the government was confident about succeeding against the opposition on the no-trust motion and had the support of all its allies. “We might also get some extra votes,” he added.
He further said the speaker had the authority to reject the votes of lawmakers who would go against their parties’ mandates. To a question about when the session for voting on the no-confidence motion would be held, he said it was a matter for the NA speaker to decide. In reply to another question, he said that apparently, under Article 63 (1) A, leader of the party has to decide whether a member had crossed the floor and then speaker gives a declaration on it.
Asked whether this also applied to the allies, he said, “no, the allies have their own parliamentary party”. When asked about Punjab Chief Minister Usman Buzdar, Chaudhry said he was the province’s chief executive because PM Imran and the PTI’s parliamentary party had confidence in him.
“But our focus for now is on the no-confidence motion. We will work on big decisions regarding Punjab, but not right now,” he added. To a question about reports of a “foreign hand” being behind the no-confidence motion and whether it was rooted in India, he replied, “Tehreek-i-Labbaik was getting support from India and it was never denied.”
