PML-N’s Sardar Ayaz Sadiq on Monday emerged as the choice of Speaker for the Lower House of Parliament once again. Sadiq bagged 268 votes while Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf’s (PTI) Shafqat Mahmood received 31. Sadiq is the first person in the country’s history to have been elected National Assembly (NA) Speaker for the second time during the same government’s tenure.The NA Speaker had been deseated by an election tribunal in August which accepted PTI chairman Imran Khan’s petition challenging Sadiq’s 2013 election win. He had defeated Imran Khan during the 2013 polls, and recently reclaimed his seat by contesting against PTI’s Aleem Khan in the NA-122 by-polls. The margin of victory has however been a large one. It should indicate to the PTI that it is becoming increasingly isolated in Pakistan’s politics with no party apparently willing to play along with its line of rigging at every stage of the electoral process. Had there been conviction among other parties that this had happened, more votes may have gone Mahmood’s way. Even erstwhile ally Jamaat-e-Islami apparently broke ranks leaving only Rawalpindi’s Sheikh Rashid to back the PTI. It is a welcome sign that the process was completed properly and with decorum. From this point on, we hope that the PTI will rest its rigging claims and participate in the much more difficult task of playing the role of a critical and constructive opposition. It is essential that all politicians in parliament, under the guidance of a speaker who has promised to continue from where he left off, focus on governance. We need to avoid further by-elections or waste time on other disputes. With the PML-N halfway through its tenure, it will be watched carefully as it tries to guide the nation further towards the goals it has itself set out for it and which Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has reiterated again and again. It could be argued that the Nawaz government hurriedly put up mega projects without proper thinking and planning under pressure of the PTI tactics and now more time and better planning at conceptual and implementation levels will be done.
pk.shafaqna.com
