ISLAMABAD: The Pakistan National Assembly yesterday witnessed an angry walkout by the deputies of Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz Sharif) to protest the Lahore High Court’s verdict Monday to disqualify former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif from contesting bypolls from a Lahore constituency.
Outside the Parliament building, hundreds of supporters of Sharif burned effigies of the president and chanted slogans against Pakistan’s judiciary yesterday as they protested the court ruling. At the outset of yesterday’s proceedings on numerous points of order PML(N) leader Javed Hashmi spearheaded an anti-Musharraf and anti-PCO judges campaign saying, “We had the prior knowledge of the judicial conspiracy against our leader and it was a murder of justice that the Lahore High Court even did not give the right of defense to the defendant’s lawyers.”
He was followed by Ayaz Amir, Begum Tehmina Saultana, Begum Nuzhat Sadiq and Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan. Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan at that stage announced to walk out from the house. He was followed by all the deputies of the PML(N).
Gilani told Parliament that the government would ask the Supreme Court to block Sharif’s disqualification and postpone the vote in Sharif’s district scheduled for tomorrow. The ruling has exacerbated tensions between Sharif’s party, and its larger partner in the ruling coalition, the Pakistan People’s Party.
Bickering over the restoration of judges ousted by President Pervez Musharraf last year has undermined their young government, whose cooperation is considered key to the US-led war on terror.
Hundreds of Sharif supporters demonstrated outside the Parliament building in Islamabad. Some of them carried large portraits of Sharif and chanted slogans against the judges retained by Musharraf after he sacked dozens of other jurists.
In Sharif’s hometown of Lahore, hundreds of protesters blocked the road and burned tires in the center of the city. Hundreds also protested in the central city of Multan, where they burned an effigy of Musharraf and one representing the judges he installed.
Sharif party spokesman Sadiqul Farooq said the party would not appeal the Lahore High Court’s ruling because it lacked confidence in the judiciary.
— With input from agencies
