ISLAMABAD: Federal Minister for Parliamentary Affairs Tariq Fazal Chaudhry has said that a state of emergency can only be imposed through the constitutional process, with the approval of the President and subsequent ratification by Parliament.
Speaking to the media outside Parliament House, the minister said the government was legally empowered to delegate the powers of the chief executive to any competent individual. He also indicated that, if necessary, such powers could be transferred to a governor.
He said that if an emergency were imposed in accordance with constitutional requirements and it resulted in political consequences, the state would have to deal with those consequences as well.
Criticising the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) over its repeated calls for protests, Chaudhry claimed that the party had failed to draw the numbers it had sought to mobilise in the three provinces.
He said that those who had previously claimed they would bring two million people to Islamabad had failed to gather even 20,000 participants. Referring to the PTI’s September 27 long march, which he described as unsuccessful, the minister said the party had now announced October 4 as a new date for its protest.
Chaudhry also criticised the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government, saying that people were deeply dissatisfied with the deteriorating law-and-order situation in the province.
He said that if the provincial government restored peace and brought prosperity to the province, the public would welcome such efforts. However, he stressed that the most pressing priority at present was to curb the growing trend of terrorism in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
The federal minister further claimed that the PTI was facing internal divisions and serious differences of opinion. According to him, there were significant disagreements within the party over the long march, with several PTI members opposing what he described as the party’s traditional and confrontational approach of marching on Islamabad.
Chaudhry claimed that these internal differences were one of the reasons the PTI would face another setback on October 4.
