Senate poll amendment: Opp should have been consulted timely: Hamza.

LAHORE -- Opposition Leader in Punjab Assembly Hamza Shehbaz has said the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf government should have taken the opposition on board for bringing the constitutional amendment related to the Senate polls well in time.

Talking to reporters here on Tuesday, Mr Hamza, who got released from jail after 20 months in a money-laundering case last week, chided the government for introducing a presidential ordinance on the Senate elections, which was rendered ineffective by the Supreme Court's decision to hold the upper house poll through a secret ballot.

'The government should have taken the opposition on board well in time on the legislation on the Senate polls, but it brought the ordinance,' he said and stressed that all stakeholders needed to sit together to steer the country out of the crises it was faced with.

Interestingly, Hamza's cousin and PML-N Vice President Maryam Nawaz has recently declared that the opposition won't sit with the PTI government for any legislation, including that on the voting mode of the Senate polls, at any stage, as it did not consider the ruling setup in the country as a legitimate government.

Hamza indirectly asked the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) as why it could not see the...