PPP reiterates demand for Nisar's resignation

Despite lengthy explanation by the interior minister over Justice Faiz Isa report, Pakistan People's Party (PPP) on Saturday stuck to its guns and reiterated its demand that Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan must resign. "Despite such a stinging indictment by the Supreme Court's Inquiry Commission, he has chosen to whitewash himself through a monologue on the media and rant against the opposition," PPP spokesperson Senator Farhatullah Babar told reporters following the press conference by the interior minister.
Babar said that any honourable person will be pained and shocked at the audacity of the interior minister in regurgitating half-truths and wagging his tongue against the opposition. Accusing Benazir Bhutto of wrongdoing and alleging once again that her name also appeared in Panama papers, the interior minister has only reinforced public perception of his trade mark; 'arrogance and falsehood at public expense,' he added.
If Benazir Bhutto is guilty of wrongdoing in the Panama papers, it is all the more reason for the interior minister to immediately get passed from the National Assembly the opposition-sponsored Bill passed by the Senate the other day and haul up all those guilty of corruption and wrongdoings, Babar said.
The logic that the interior ministry cannot stop the Defence of Pakistan Council (DPC) from holding public meetings because it is not a proscribed organisation is a perversion of truth and making a mockery of fight against militancy. "The DPC may not be a proscribed entity in itself. The minister who publicly shed tears at the assassination of terrorist Hakimullah Mehsud may feel compelled to defend it. But what about the individuals listed in Schedule IV and the proscribed entities who have banded together to carry on their activities under the so-called non-proscribed Defence of Pakistan Council," he asked.
This is the logic of a mind that wishes to assert that proscribed organisations and listed individuals are free to carry out their activities by grouping themselves under a label that is not proscribed, he added. This perverted logic has only lent additional strength to the damning indictment by the Inquiry Commission of the utter incompetence and abysmal failure of the Interior Ministry, he said.
The catalogue of sweeping failures of the Interior Ministry under Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan listed by the Inquiry Commission is so sweeping in breadth and depth that leaves no room for the interior minister to remain in the cabinet even for a day, he claimed. As the whole edifice of counterterrorism effort has come crumbling under the Interior Minister, the party expects him to voluntarily resign. In case he is unwilling, he must be shown the door, he demanded. There is no other alternative if the government is serious and is not running with the hare and hunting with the hound in the fight against militancy, he said. "The absence of alternatives must make the mind clear," he added.