Opposition agrees to include MQM in parliamentary inquiry committee

ISLAMABAD: Opposition parties decided on Friday to give representation to the the MQM in the joint parliamentary committee set up to formulate terms of reference (ToR) for the proposed Panama Commission.

Earlier, due to differences between the MQM and the other opposition parties, the former wasn’t given representation in the twelve-member committee — comprising six members each from the opposition and treasury benches.

The differences within the opposition, its leaders said, were based on a misunderstanding, which were resolved in a meeting held in the chamber of Leader of the Opposition, PPP’s Syed Khursheed Shah.

The earlier list, which the opposition had come up with on Wednesday night, had included the names of PPP’s Aitzaz Ahsan, Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf’s (PTI) Shah Mehmood Qureshi, Aftab Sherpao of the Qaumi Watan Party, Sahibzada Tariqullah of the Jamaat-i-Islami, Awami National Party’s Ilyas Bilour and Pakistan Muslim League-Quaid’s Tariq Bashir Cheema. The government is yet to give its set of names for the committee to the speaker’s office.

Talking to reporters after the meeting, Mr Shah said the MQM was very much part of the opposition benches in both houses of Parliament. “Therefore, we have decided to take the party on board on the issue of Panama leaks.” He said that MQM’s Senator Mohammad Ali Khan Saif will now sit on the committee in place of Aftab Sherpao, who has voluntarily left the committee.

It was the PTI which had until Thursday opposed the inclusion of the MQM. When asked, PTI’s parliamentary leader, Shah Mehmood Qureshi, told Dawn: “From day one, MQM was part of the opposition when we first proposed our set of ToR for the investigation into Panama leaks.” Later on, Mr Qureshi said, the MQM due to some misunderstanding had distanced itself from the combined opposition.

What the misunderstanding was, Mr Qureshi said, was that the MQM had argued that the opposition parties were only targeting Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and his family in the background of Panama Papers.

Dr Farooq Sattar, who was also present during the meeting, said the Panama Papers had given a bad name to politics; therefore, some long-term measures should be taken to root out corruption from the country and create a permanent institution for accountably.

However, one opposition leader speaking on the condition of anonymity told Dawn that the MQM was definitely in touch with the government.

Published in Dawn, May 21st, 2016