Senate seeks details of Dawn Leaks settlement

ISLAMABAD: Opposition parties in the Senate have sought details of the agreement reached between the civil and military leadership over the Dawn Leaks issue, insisting that a matter professed as national security issue for months cannot be hushed up through a ‘settlement’ between the two sides.

Contrary to an amenable posture adopted by members of the opposition during the inaugural session on Thursday, those carrying forward the debate on Friday were intransigent in their demand to present the inquiry report of the alleged leaks before parliament.

Barrister Aitzaz Ahsan, Opposition Leader in the Upper House, questioned the difference in the two notifications – the one issued on April 26 which army’s media wing blatantly rejected through a blunt tweet and the other issued on May 8 after which the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) director general not only publically withdrew his tweet but also held an apologetic presser the same day.

“There was no change” in the two notifications, except for the inclusion of Senator Pervaiz Rashid’s name in the new one, who had already been removed as information minister soon after the story was published in October last year, said Ahsan, offering an answer to his own query.

The opposition leader said the Dawn Leaks report claimed that one of the participants during the purported high-level civil-military huddle at the Prime Minister’s House was critical of the military for not taking a decisive action against militants.

“If such a story was a deliberate leak or if fabricated information was fed to the reporter, in both scenarios, it was an attempt to embarrass the armed forces,” he said.

Interestingly, all the three persons – then information minister Rashid, Assistant to Prime Minister on Foreign Affairs Tariq Fatemi and Press Information Officer Rao Tehsin, against whom action was taken, were not part of that meeting, he added.

The three men were made scapegoats to exonerate the real culprits, he said, firmly repeating his claim that the head of a premier intelligence agency is a relative of the prime minister’s daughter.

The opposition leader also claimed that Sindh Governor Muhammad Zubair, during a TV talk show a while ago, had admitted that a special media cell, led by the prime minister’s daughter, had bugged the proceedings of an all-party conference.

This, according to Ahsan, corroborates some media reports that the same cell bugs all important meetings at the Prime Minister House, “which is a very serious matter”.

“If Fatemi, Rashid and Tehsin are really culpable, they should be tried. I offer my services to defend them in the court of law. I am sure they had no involvement in the matter but were made scapegoats,” he added.

The PPP leader quoted a few examples where the PM’s daughter, through her tweets, was disclosing important information discussed during high-level meetings, which she was not even a part of.

He said he was first to censure the DG ISPR when he rejected the government’s first notification through a tweet.

“I had said how he dare reject an order issued by the office of the prime minister,” he remarked, adding that if the matter had been decided, with the federal government exerting its constitutional authority, the opposition would have accepted that for the sake of civilian supremacy.

“But, here it is being repeatedly stated that the matter have been settled between the two parties, which means you have made two sides on a par with one another as equal parties in a conflict,” he said.

“We need to know how the matter is settled… who settled it and how? Under what law is it settled? We can’t accept this… we need to know what the Paragraph 18 of the report is?” he inquired.

No one, including the prime minister, the army chief or the DG ISPR, is above parliament, he said, adding that they “should come to this house and answer these questions to our satisfaction”.

Speaking during the session, requisitioned on opposition’s demand, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf’s Nauman Wazir seconded Ahsan’s point of view.

Senate Chairman Raza Rabbani indirectly supported the opposition parties’ stance. He asked the state minister for parliamentary affairs, “What does the government mean when it says the matter is settled between the two sides?”

The minister, who had come to the house to conclude the debate, naively replied, “It meant military and civilian government”.

His reply prompted the chairman to repeat the remarks he had made a day earlier, elaborating constitutional provisions that clearly define the role of the federal government and its control over the armed forces.

“Should we assume the incumbent government does not believe in Article 243? The Constitution clearly states armed forces would work under the federal government’s control. Article 90 elaborates what federal government is. I am not satisfied with your explanation. I would ask the leader of the house and the leader of the opposition to guide me and the Senate would decide accordingly on how to move ahead on the issue,” Rabbani remarked.

The house was discussing Panama Leaks issue when the news of an attack on the convoy of the Senate deputy chairman came in. That took the debate to a new issue.

Cabinet member Hasil Bazinjo claimed that he had been particularly pointing out for a long time that district Mustang, where the attack took place, has become a bastion of terrorists of a certain outfit. Many attacks had been carried out in the same area on Shia pilgrims en-route to holy sites in Iran, he said.

Source: The Express Tribune