Pakistan’s parliament erupted in chaos Tuesday after an opposition leader launched an incendiary speech criticizing recent budget proposals by Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan, Pakistan’s Dawn newspaper reported Wednesday.
The incident, which took place at Pakistan’s Parliament House in Islamabad on June 15, saw some lawmakers attack each other in “fistfights” and others hurl budget books aimed at their colleagues, according to Dawn.
Pakistani opposition leader Shahbaz Sharif — officially the Leader of Opposition in the National Assembly, the lower house of Pakistan’s parliament — addressed the National Assembly in a speech on Tuesday that was immediately met with “jeers, slogans and whistles” from members of the legislative body’s treasury, according to Pakistan’s Geo News.
Dawn provided further details of the treasury’s protest slogans:
As soon as Shehbaz Sharif took the floor and started lashing out at the government for its economic policies, the treasury members again stood up and started whistling, desk-thumping and chanting slogans like chor, chor (thief, thief), daku, daku (robber, robber) and ‘TT, TT’, a reference to the term ‘telegraphic transfer’ often used for money laundering in the country.
“Imran Khan Niazi promised 10 million jobs. Where are those jobs?” Sharif asked in his speech. “Where are the … [$]300 [billion] that was supposed to be brought back to the country from abroad?”
The opposition leader alleged that Prime Minister Khan’s “claims of eliminating corruption from Pakistan were hollow,” according to the Hindustan Times.
“Pakistan is suffering from the worst form of corruption today,” Sharif said.
“No act of posting or transferring someone these days is done without an element of corruption these days,” he added.
The opposition leader’s scathing speech sparked pandemonium on the parliament floor as treasury members and opposition supporters scuffled with one another over Sharif’s words.
“When an undeterred Sharif continued his speech, some of the treasury members were seen advancing towards the opposition benches, but they were prevented from doing so by the security staff,” Dawn, a Karachi-based newspaper, reported.
“At this stage, the treasury members started throwing the books and documents at the opposition members, who also responded in the same coin. Some of the members, including Ali Nawaz Awan, were seen and heard using abusive and filthy language. Many members from both sides raised slogans while standing on their chairs,” according to the newspaper.
The Pakistan parliament’s Speaker of the House, Asad Qaiser, suspended the meeting’s proceedings “for 40 minutes when Ali Nawaz Awan, who is also special assistant to the prime minister, threw a book towards the opposition benches, which came back to him,” Dawn reported. Pakistan’s House Speaker would later announce two additional time suspensions at Tuesday’s parliamentary meeting after legislators refused to heed calls to halt their abusive behavior toward each other.
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