The PTI will be contesting the appointment of the NAB chief.
According to Cheema, the PTI has already written to the Speaker of the National Assembly to request that Shah Mehmood Qureshi be appointed as the opposition leader.
Omar Sarfaraz Cheema, the leader of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) and a former governor of Punjab, declared on Saturday that the party intended to contest the selection of the new National Accountability Bureau (NAB) head in court.
Once Raja Riaz, the leader of the opposition in the National Assembly, and Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif agreed on the choice of the retired general, the federal government selected Lt Gen (retd) Nazir Ahmad Butt as the next NAB chairman for a three-year term.
Following talks between the prime minister and various leaders, including Asif Ali Zardari, the president of the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPPP), General Syed Asim Munir, and Maulana Fazlur Rehman, the head of Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-Fazl (JUI-F), the government appointed a new accountability czar.
Cheema revealed to The Express Tribune that earlier in February, the PTI wrote to the speaker of the National Assembly to seek that PTI MNA Shah Mehmood Qureshi be named as the opposition leader. Yet instead of granting the request, the speaker continued Raja Riaz, a PTI dissident, as the head of the opposition even though he no longer had the majority of the opposition benches’ backing.
Despite being fully aware that Riaz could no longer serve as the opposition leader after courts overturned the NA speaker’s decision to accept the PTI lawmakers’ resignations and allowed the party lawmakers to return to the assembly in numbers much greater than those supporting Riaz, they still used their own pawn.
Cheema said that in light of this, the party had decided to contest the appointment in court since the new NAB chairman’s appointment was illegitimate.
The former governor also emphasised Riaz’s admission that he planned to run for a ticket from the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), which is now in power, in the next elections.
Last year, the PTI dissidents and opposition leader Riaz played a key role in toppling the PTI-led government. They caused a breach within the party because of their involvement in these incidents. Some PTI members accused them of being opportunists and compromising the party’s beliefs.
