ISLAMABAD: Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) leader Senator Aitzaz Ahsan had said that Minister of Defence Khawaja Asif’s inappropriate language against Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf’s (PTI) Shireen Mazari in the National Assembly (NA) on Wednesday was because of his frustration following a meeting at General Headquarters (GHQ) earlier this week.
Speaking to a private TV channel, he said that the meeting at GHQ was most astonishing where top ministers were summoned and “sat like school children”. He added, “Ministers were never summoned in such a way to a meeting at the GHQ during the PPP government”. The Wednesday’s NA session was disrupted when opposition lawmakers, including Mazari started protesting during Asif’s speech on load shedding during Ramazan. Asif asked the NA Speaker Ayaz Sadiq to “silence this tractor trolley” while pointing towards Mazari and referred to her voice as ‘masculine’. Following the incident, the speaker ordered Asif’s remarks be expunged from the record and Asif refused to apologise to Mazari and said said, “I am not going to apologise, they can do whatever they want”. However, later he said that he did not mean to target her and that he is ashamed on his unworthy remarks.
Chief of Army Staff General Raheel Sharif had convened a meeting on Tuesday that he termed as “extraordinary” with key ministers managing affairs in the Prime Minister’s absence, including Adviser to the PM on Foreign Affairs Sartaj Aziz, Defence Minister Khawaja Asif, Finance Minister Ishaq Dar, Foreign Secretary Aizaz Chaudhry and PM’s Special Assistant Tariq Fatemi.
