Senate standoff: Opposition to hold open sky session today

ISLAMABAD: The opposition bench in the Senate would remain vacant today in accordance with the decision of the Senate opposition parties meeting headed by Aitzaz Ahsan held yesterday, Geo News reported.

The unprecedented standoff in the Senate between the joint opposition and Interior Minister Ch. Nisar Ali Khan took a new turn on Tuesday when the leader of the opposition Senator Aitzaz Ahsan announced that they would hold the Senate session on Wednesday under the open sky outside the Parliament House.

The agenda prepared by the opposition parties for discussions in the Senate session outside the parliament would include US drone attacks, inflation, security situation in the country, missing persons, rehabilitation of the quake-affected people, FATA, Karachi situation and the interior minister’s attitude and privatization of the state enterprises.

The opposition, which enjoys a clear majority in the House, persisted with its continuing boycott of the proceedings on Tuesday also amid calls by MQM’s Tahir Hussain Mashhadi that the interior minister should be approached to shun his ego and come to the Senate and withdraw the “wrong information” he shared with the House.

“We will not let the government run away. We have prepared the agenda for tomorrow’s Senate session. We will expose the government and there will talk on price spiral of essential commodities, increased tariff of electricity, gas, hike in the prices of petroleum products,” asserted Aitaz while talking to the media persons outside the Parliament House following the adjournment of the Senate sitting.

He regretted that one person had made the entire government and parliament hostage by making it an issue of his ego. “He may not aplogise to us but he should withdraw the wrong information he shared with the Senate. The government is following a policy of double standards: first it presented figures of civilian casualties of drone strikes that supported and strengthened the US position on drones; second the interior minister is not ready to take back these figures,” he noted.