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Pakhtunkhwa Milli Awami Party (PkMAP) chief and leader of the Tehreek-e-Tahaffuz-e-Ain-e-Pakistan (TTAP), Mahmood Khan Achakzai on Wednesday criticised the National Assembly Speaker Sardar Ayaz Sadiq for his attitude and threatened to move a no-confidence motion against him in the next session.
“If the Speaker of the National Assembly does not change his attitude, we will present a no-confidence motion against him in the next session,” Achakzai said while addressing the media outside the Parliament on Wednesday. He was accompanied by Leader of the Opposition in the National Assembly Omar Ayub Khan, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Chairman Gauhar Ali Khan, and PTI leaders Asad Qaiser and Zartaj Gul Wazir.
“You (NA Speaker) are supposed to be a Speaker, not a dictator, a Muslim League worker, or an orderly," Achakzai said as he criticised the speaker for playing an allegedly biased role.
"This parliament represents 240 million people, and we will not let it become just a debating society or a rubber stamp," he asserted.
The PkMAP chief said the supremacy of Parliament is only acknowledged in this country when it is needed to pardon the sins of ten-years-long martial law/dictatorship.
Referring to how some parliamentarians were turned away from jail and refused an audience with PTI founder Imran Khan, Achakzai expressed his surprise. He recalled how members of Parliament enjoy the privilege of inspecting any prison, but a delegation of assembly members was not allowed to meet their leader in jail.
Achakzai also harshly criticised the incumbent government, blaming it for bulldozing through Parliament a law granting the country's premier intelligence gathering agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), the authority to intercept and trace phone calls, with the ability to record telephonic conversations, and hear and rehear them at will.
He declared that the combined opposition had nothing to do with this move by the government.
The PkMAP chief also condemned the censorship of speeches made by opposition leaders, both on the floor of the Parliament and outside of it. He claimed that the opposition was facing a blackout by the media.
Apart from asking the National Assembly Speaker to mend his attitude towards the opposition members, he further urged him to ensure that whatever elected assembly members from the opposition benches say on the floor is recorded verbatim in the official records.