Sherry Rehman declares Imran a security risk

ISLAMABAD: PPP Parliamentary Leader in Senate Senator Sherry Rehman said on Wednesday that the entire country is now waiting upon their lordships to decide the fate of Pakistan's democracy, parliament and Constitution, which all hang in the balance.

“It took less than one minute to vaporize our parliament and we hope it will not take long to reverse illegal actions of a Speaker and Deputy Speaker who no longer hold the confidence of the House, just like their former Prime Minister,” she said while speaking to media outside the Supreme Court on Wednesday.

"While we wait, the PTI’s desperate and blatant illegality has now engulfed the Punjab Assembly too, where barbed wire surrounds and the Deputy Speaker himself was locked out of the Assembly on the day of voting for the Chief Minister."

Senator Sherry Rehman said Imran Khan has linked his political survival with weaponising national security charges that he is unable to prove, while his actions in the National Assembly on Sunday show how he is going to do anything to ensure his survival including the dissolution of the assemblies.

She said no democratically elected government to date had ever committed such unconstitutional actions, so why did the failed PTI regime think it could. “Imran is now a security risk for Pakistan, considering how he has single-handedly pushed the country towards instability and chaos,” she said.

She said the pattern is obvious: use any illegality to deny the fact that the regime has lost its support in both the Punjab and National Assemblies of Pakistan. “Such a flagrant pummeling of the Constitution which protects voting and No-Confidence procedures in Pakistan’s legislatures should not be condoned in any way”, she said.

Senator Sherry Rehman said there is no link between the “cable” that was described as “dash dash dash” by one of the former Ministers to justify the extreme unconstitutional act of illegally dissolving the NA while a vote of no-confidence was to be conducted.

She said the Speaker’s action to link an illegal ruling to allegations of “treachery” against 198 members has plunged the country into an unprecedented crisis. "We are waiting for the honourable court’s verdict to stabilise the situation.”

She stated: "PTI’s self-serving approach to matters of foreign policy might seem for them a way to save face and build a new narrative for a defeated party, but ends up harming Pakistan: a nuclear-armed state whose foreign policy cannot afford to be isolationist."

The PPP Vice President said the PPP government was able to obtain an apology from the US after the Salala attack through painstaking diplomacy and moved on to shut down the Shamsi Air Base, suspending NATO’s ground lines of communication while maintaining stable ties with the US. “Why could Khan not obtain an apology for this cable if there was such a threat," she said.

Sherry Rehman, who has served as an Ambassador of Pakistan to the US, said, "Using confidential foreign correspondence to further his agenda is going to deter career diplomats from sending cables in the future, which will indelibly harm our already compromised foreign relations. She said Imran’s bid to rile up the masses by presenting a classified diplomatic cable in a public rally and conducting foreign policy by weaponising an unproven allegation is regrettable.

Instead of dissolving the assemblies, Senator Sherry Rehman said, Imran Khan should have done the honourable thing and resigned. “Did Imran Khan summon the US Diplomats in Islamabad after receiving the letter, and if he had asked Washington to review, why have the details not been given? Imran Khan has put Pakistan between two international blocs just to save his skin,” she said.

“No one is against fair election, however, there is an urgent need for electoral reforms. “We are not fighting for our gains but against the blatant disregard of the constitution. There can’t be two different laws for PTI and the Opposition. The Constitution applies equally to every citizen of Pakistan and the issue at hand is the Speaker’s illegal ruling, which we hope the honourable court will reverse."

She said PTI’s attempts to create a false link with a foreign policy conspiracy are beyond spurious, it is mala fide and misleading. "The security agencies have not found any credible evidence of a foreign conspiracy behind the no-trust motion against Khan, but it is high time the evidence was brought forth as the charges are of serious nature." “Imran could not save his regime even after attacking the Constitution,” she said, concluding, "the shocking part is that he has tried to save his face at the cost of the nation and its international standing."