November 18, 2002	Monday	Ramazan 12, 1423

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ISLAMABAD Nov 17: The People’s Party Parliamentarians president, Makhdoom Amin Fahim, has said that his party’s parliamentary group would meet to choose its candidate for the prime minister’s post in its meeting on Monday.

He was talking to newsmen at an Iftar party given by him for the ARD leaders, party parliamentarians, and journalists here on Sunday.

Among others, who were in attendance at the party included: the ARD chief Nawabzada Nasrullah Khan, the MMA’s secretary-general and prime ministerial candidate Maulana Fazlur Rahman, the PML-N acting president Makhdoom Javed Hashmi, Tehmina Daultana MNA, the MMA leaders Hafiz Hussain Ahmed and Maulana Abdul Ghafoor Haidri.

Nobody from the PPP forward bloc turned up.

Fahim claimed that his party was united and it could not be weakened by any forward bloc.

He said, parliament was a sovereign institution which holds sway over the Constitution whether it accepted any clause inserted in it or to remove from it.

Responding to a query, he said, the Supreme Court had no power to produce, amend, or alter the Constitution, hence it had no authority to empower an individual to perform such duty.

Makhdoom Javed Hashmi, also present there, told a questioner that parliament alone could decide on the Legal Framework Order (LFO) whether to strike it down or to include it in the Constitution by two-thirds majority; until then it had no constitutional status.

Aitzaz Ahsan said that the agencies had been very active for the last few months in the making and breaking of the political parties, and now they had embarked upon manufacturing forward and backward blocs, but this exercise would not benefit anyone.