Pakistan People's Party has announced to end its role of `friendly' opposition in the parliament. "We will now act as the opposition and not as the `friendly' opposition that we did in the parliament in order to save parliamentary democracy," Leader of the Opposition in the National Assembly, Syed Khurshid Ahmed Shah, told a private TV channel on Saturday.
Shah castigated the government for invoking Article 245 of the Constitution which the latter has employed to deploy the army in the federal capital and termed it `a political blunder' by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. "Neither the parliament, nor the political parties were taken into confidence over a decision as important as this," Shah said. "An in-camera joint session of the parliament should have been called before invoking this article," Shah remarked.
He said the prevailing political situation had led the government to behave in a confused manner, adding that it had also closed dialogue with other political forces, a situation, which Shah said was resulting in chaos. "The government should urgently restart dialogue with various political forces, or else I fear that the democratic system may be jeopardised," Shah warned.