report in the Nation, Dec 7, 2020
ISLAMABAD – Senate Standing Committee on Interior Chairman Rehman Malik on Sunday urged Prime Minister Imran Khan to make public the names of people, seeking a National Reconciliation Ordinance-like deal, which he had been referring to in his speeches time and again.
Malik dispelled the impression that Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) had ever signed an NRO, adding it was merely propaganda to defame the party leadership.
He further said that the government must stop ‘political victimization’ in the name of accountability, adding there was a thin line between accountability and victimization. In a series of tweets, the former interior minister said that the ‘confused’ nation wanted the PM to make public the names of those who were begging for NRO. He stated that there was neither any provision of NRO in the Constitution of Pakistan nor the prime minister had the authority to order NAB to close the cases.
He said that opposition leaders were playing their games for personal benefits. He expressed the fear that both the opposition and government will continue to fight on a slippery mat of democracy that will slip away from their feet.
Senator Rehman Malik argued that prime minister’s assertion that he would prefer ‘leaving the government’ rather than giving NRO to the opposition leaders showed he was under severe pressure for that.
The senator regretted that present-day democracy was not real since there were not many parliamentarians representing the middle class.
Malik, while expressing his deepest concern over the news that seven coronavirus patients had passed away at the Peshawar’s Khyber Teaching Hospital on Saturday as oxygen cylinders from Rawalpindi failed to arrive on time, urged the government to provide oxygen cylinders and ventilators to hospitals in enough quantities as coronavirus cases were expected to rise in coming days. He said that it showed government’s negligence that seven people died because of the lack of oxygen cylinders.
