THE ASIA NOW

GHOTKI: PTI Chairman Imran Khan on Sunday informed that his party would march on Islamabad if a law were passed to grant forgiveness to “robbers.”

Talking to rally in Ubauro town of Ghotki district, Imran Khan said, “The nation would not admit another NRO. We’ll go to Islamabad and protest till we get rid of dishonest leadership if an effort is made to amend National Accountability Bureau laws.”

Mentioning former president Gen (r) Pervez Musharraf’s 2007 NRO, Imran Khan said that PPP Chairman Asif Ali Zardari and PML-N-Nawaz president Nawaz Sharif had already been granted an NRO once, but we won’t allow it to occur.

The PTI chairman also warned Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi that if the NAB law were amended to benefit Sharif or Zardari, his party would take to streets.

Pointing his guns at the PPP leadership, Imran Khan assumed that the rulers of Sindh had continued to persecute the people of the province for decades. “The people of Sindh must understand that their rulers have been most unfair to them for decades now,” he said, claiming that he had made a lot of efforts to awaken the people of Sindh and that they were no more indifferent to the injustices done to them.

Continuing his invective against the PPP and PML-N, the PTI chairman alleged that “Nawaz Sharif had laundered Rs300 billion and Zardari was not far behindhand”. He also interrogated how these frontrunners could be sincere with the nation when their properties were hidden abroad.  He requested the people of Sindh not to vote for any leader whose wealth was parked outside of Pakistan and refuse those rulers who were shamefaced of corruption. “Every rupee that I own is in Pakistan, and that is why I am worried about this country and its growth unlike those who have moved all of their money abroad,” added Khan.

Senior PTI leaders Shah Mahmood Qureshi, Jahangir Tareen and Awami Muslim League chairman Sheikh Rasheed also addressed the rally.

The PTI chairman’s remarks come in the wake of the government’s strategy to set up for a vote a controversial constitutional amendment bill that offers right to appeal against an order of the Supreme Court passed in (so moto) notice during the current session of the National Assembly.

The Constitution (24th Amendment) Bill was listed in the House in November last year. In January, the NA Standing Committee on Law and Justice approved it with a majority vote and referred it back to the House for a vote.

The bill was announced at a time (on November 18, 2016) when the Supreme Court heard the Panama game case under Article 184 (original jurisdiction of the Supreme Court) of the Constitution.

The 24th Amendment bill recommends adding two new clauses — 184 (4) and 184 (5) — to Article 184.

The clauses suggest that anybody distressed by an order passed by the Supreme Court under Clause (3) of Article 184 (suo moto case) might file an appeal in the Supreme Court and such requests would be heard by a bench larger than the bench that passes the order.

The government would need a two-thirds majority vote to get it passed by both the houses of parliament.

However, the primary opposition party, the PPP, has already been supporting this piece of legislation. Given the situation, the government faces no difficulty regarding managing the required strength to get the bill passed.