21st Amendment: politicians, media urged to desist from raising controversy

Secretary General PPP Punjab Tanvir Ashraf Kaira has urged the section of politicians, civil society and media to desist from making the 21st Amendment as controversial in the face of the national unity against terrorism and extremism. He said that the establishment of military courts' and their functioning under the democratic dispensation would work within the ambit of the constitutional amendment brought in by Parliament and therefore the chances of miscarriage of justice would be nil.
He maintained that the apprehensions of the critics were baseless because the Parliament, free media and the assertive civil society including the legal fraternity would be watching the court proceedings with a view to whether these courts were meeting the demands of justice or not.
The legal obligation that the military courts would only adjudicate on those cases of terrorism which would be referred by the federal government should surely alley the fears of political victimisation, he maintained. He reminded the critics that the country was in a state of war and had been fighting the war of its survival adding they should foster unity instead of sowing the seeds of division to the utter advantage of terrorists. Terrorists would be happy for serving their biddings even by default, he observed.
He said that the critics should think of the innocent civilians, children and soldiers martyred by terrorists before indulging in confusing the nation that had gel together against those who were neither Muslims, nor Pakistani or human beings. They must be confronted as the exercise of all other options had not yielded propitious results.
He pointed out that the PPP and its leadership was quite clear in this regard right from the outset and had been urging the other parties to defeat the evil on its turf as the top most priority. Their tendency to impose their ideology at gum point is limitless, he added.
The Secretary General projected that the entire leadership of the country should focus on exterminating the terrorists from the country for the sake of the future of this generation and the posterity. They pose a grave threat to the security of the country and our way of life and beyond.