In a turnabout after more than two months of cosying up with the government against a siege of sit-ins, the opposition was in revolt in the National Assembly on Thursday, walking out of the house twice over the previous day’s police action against protesting workers of a state energy company.
Lawmakers of most opposition parties first staged a token walkout to protest at the use of batons and teargas against hundreds of workers of the Oil and Gas Development Co Ltd and later stormed out in a boycott of the day’s remaining proceedings in a move that also targeted Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan after Leader of Opposition Khursheed Shah talked of unspecified “incompetent people” causing problems for Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif.
The walkouts, which the Muttahida Qaumi Movement did not join apparently because of its own rows with PPP to which Mr Shah belongs, followed a rumpus in the Senate on Wednesday over the same incident that happened on a crossing south of the parliament house. The workers, about 25 of whom were arrested and several injured in clashes with police, were protesting against government plans to sell up to10 per cent of its stakes in the OGDCL, which Mr Shah said should not be privatised for being a profitable enterprise, whose profit in the fiscal 2012-13 stood at Rs124 billion.
Members of smaller opposition parties, including the Jamaat-i-Islami, Qaumi Watan Party and Balochistan National Party, walked out with the PPP after a hard-hitting speech by the opposition leader, who reiterated his call to the prime minister in the house on Wednesday to consult opposition parties about privatisation. He said the opposition would resist use of force against workers, contrary to support it gave the government against what he called a conspiracy against the parliament in the shape of sit-ins by the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf and Pakistan Awami Tehreek.
