ISLAMABAD - The Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) and the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) on Saturday agreed to hold discussions next week on the name of new opposition leader in the National Assembly.
The PTI Vice-Chairman, Shah Mahmood Qureshi, spoke to MQM-P leader Dr Farooq Sattar and both sides agreed to meet on September 26th in Karachi to decide who would be the new leader of the opposition in the National Assembly, a PTI announcement said.
A delegation of the PTI including QureshI, Asad Umar, Imran Ismail and Firdous Naqvi will meet MQM-P leadership on Tuesday evening next week.
The PTI here on Friday had mandated Qureshi to hold talks with other opposition parties in the lower house to get a new leader of the opposition.
The parliamentary party of the PTI that met on Friday gave go ahead to me to hold talks with other opposition parties in the National Assembly, including MQM and the Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) to change leader of the opposition, Qureshi, who is also the deputy parliamentary leader of his party in NA, had told The Nation.
The move to change PPP’s Syed Khursheed Shah as the opposition leader was spearheaded by the MQM last week, which is annoyed with the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), over various issues related to Karachi.
Last week, the MQM had contacted the PTI and floated the name of Shah Mahmood Qureshi as the new leader of opposition in place of PPP’s Shah.
Earlier, after the general elections of 2013, the MQM had supported PPP to make Syed Khursheed Shah, leader of the opposition.
On Friday, the MQM ditched the PPP in the Senate when the former did not support the latter to get pass an amendment in the Election Bill that was meant to block the way of ousted prime minister Nawaz Sharif to lead his party, the PML-N.
The MQM is sitting on the opposition benches both in Senate and the National Assembly.
The slot of the leader of the opposition in the National Assembly is being considered very important as the time of appointment of the chairman of the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) and the next general elections are coming near.
Meanwhile, the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf on Saturday announced its intention to challenge the Elections Bill 2017, passed by the Senate on Friday paying way for ousted prime minister Nawaz Sharif to again become head of PML-N, in court.
Talking to the mediamen here on Saturday, PTI Vice Chairman Shah Mahmood Qureshi said that the party, after consultations, would make a final decision on challenging the bill. He maintained that Nawaz Sharif and PPP Co-Chairman Asif Ali Zardari are in touch with each other, adding three PPP leaders ? former Senate chairman Farooq H Naek, Fateh Muhammad Hasni and Rubina Khalid — did not follow the line of the rest of the members including the opposition leader, and voted in the government’s favour on the bill in the Upper House.
Earlier, addressing the party workers, Qureshi said the nation would be disappointed if PTI also rewarded people having tainted past.
Qureshi lashed out at some of his own party leaders without naming anyone and said that masses were finding those faces within PTI whose hands were clean and their past was not tainted.
Qureshi said the nation was looking towards PTI as other parties had failed to deliver. “Besides Imran Khan, the people are searching out those faces (within PTI) whose hands are clean and whose intentions are good,” he said.
Qureshi further said that neither he had any prejudice for anyone nor he was opponent to anyone within the party and added: “But I promise to the nation that being the party’s vice-chairman, it is my responsibility to make clear that what is right and what is wrong...I will tell who is who.” He said all that glitters is not gold.
He also went on to say that PTI was the product of failures of Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) and Pakistan Muslim League (PML-N) besides the untiring efforts of Imran Khan.
He said that people looked toward PTI after facing disappointment from these two parties. The people were disappointed when these parties forgot their manifestos and started politics of money, interests and the power, he said and added then people were forced to look towards the PTI. He said that this was the time to hold such parties accountable.
He also said that Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi had not admitted himself as premier as he used to say that Nawaz Sharif was his prime minister.
He said that people had joined PTI and its chairman Imran Khan would bring about a change and this could only be brought with an ideology. He said that Imran Khan gave hope to the disappointed people.