March 6, 2003	Thursday	Muharram 2, 1424

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ISLAMABAD, March 5: Protesting opposition parties brought the National Assembly to a standstill on Wednesday as they rejected the Constitution as amended by President Pervez Musharraf’s controversial Legal Framework Order (LFO) and returned its newly supplied copies to the house speaker.

All the opposition parties united in a steering committee later vowed not to allow any proceedings of the 342-seat lower house unless the government agreed to delete the LFO, which gives sweeping powers to the president, from the Constitution.

Speaker Chaudhry Amir Hussain twice adjourned the house to let government ministers persuade the opposition to end its uproarious protest and let the assembly proceed with its business, but each time opposition members came back shouting “no LFO, no LFO” before his rostrum and would not go back to their seats.

Finally a seemingly helpless speaker adjourned the house until Friday morning — giving the two sides a full day to try to come to terms.

OPPOSITION VOW: But leaders of opposition parties said later they would repeat their protests in the same way until the government agreed to delete the LFO from the Constitution and bring the controversial presidential decrees it contains to parliament for approval.

What turned out to be an unprecedented parliamentary protest in the country started immediately after a Qari finished the recitation from the holy Quran at the start of the session on Wednesday afternoon when all house members were supplied with the newly printed copies of the Constitution as promised by the government on Tuesday.

Before the scheduled question hour could start, the house burst into an uproar when nearly all opposition members stood up at their seats waving the newly printed green-cover copies of the Constitution, some of them asking an embarrassed speaker to allow them to speak on points of order.

He could not fulfil his promise to let them do so according to their computer-set turns as all of about 100 opposition members present later walked up to his rostrum and returned the Constitution’s copies, which formed a heap on the assembly secretary’s table.

A woman member of the People’s Party Parliamentarians (PPP) stole the show by being the first to reach the speaker’s rostrum and return the Constitution’s copy while Liaqat Baloch of the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal continued a hardly audible speech denouncing the LFO.

The speaker’s repeated requests for order in the house were drowned by opposition chants, including “no LFO, no”, “go Musharraf, go”.

At one point opposition members returned to the house carrying in their hands paper placards inscribed with “LFO namanzoor” and “we reject the dictatorial amendments to the Constitution”.

As the opposition parties protested, members of the ruling Pakistan Muslim League-Q and its allies sat out quietly without uttering a word of support for the LFO, which empowers General Musharraf to remain president and army chief for five more years, head a military-civilian National Security Council, dissolve the National Assembly and sack prime ministers.

The LFO also gives the president the previously prime ministerial powers to appoint armed forces chiefs and provincial governors, who in turn can dissolve provincial assemblies and sack chief ministers.

Neither Prime Minister Zafarullah Khan Jamali nor PML-Q chief Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain were present in the house when the apparent helplessness of the ruling coalition also exposed some differences in their ranks.

Information and Media Development Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed told reporters that the opposition parties, by their protest on the LFO, had diverted attention from more important issue of foreign policy which was scheduled for a debate on Wednesday.

However, the foreign policy debate, as all other business, could not be held.

Inside the house, Water and Power Minister Aftab Ahmed Sherpao was seen ending an apparently heated group chat with some cabinet colleagues with a sudden jerk of his hand and going back to his seat.

However, his colleagues — including PML-Q chief whip and Labour and Manpower Minister Abdul Sattar Laleka and Commerce Minister Humayun Akhtar — came to him and took him along outside the hall.

MMA leader Maulana Fazlur Rehman told reporters some pro-government members of smaller parties had also lent support to the opposition’s point of view.

The LFO, decreed by the president as a package of his constitutional amendments, has been at the centre of a constitutional row between the government and opposition parties since the inauguration of the newly elected assembly in November.

At the assembly’s inaugural session on November 16, all major opposition parties said their members were taking oath under the 1973 Constitution as it stood before General Musharraf seized power in the 1999 coup and that they would not recognise the LFO amendments without a parliamentary approval.

Government spokesmen have been saying the Constitution, suspended by Gen Musharraf after the October 12, 1999 coup and only partially revived last November, has already been amended by the LFO but had not distributed its copies widely in a move seemingly aimed at avoiding provoking opposition parties.

But opposition parties have repeatedly said they would not accept any constitutional amendment until it is passed by the both houses of parliament by the required two-thirds majority.

OPPOSITION ARGUMENTS: The opposition parliamentary group leaders later told reporters that they were clear in their stand that parliament was a supreme body that alone could make or amend the Constitution.

The combined opposition formed a steering committee comprising leaders and deputy leaders of their parliamentary groups to discuss the LFO issue and take future decisions.

Maulana Fazlur Rahman said leaders of some smaller groups of one or two MNAs had also supported the combined opposition on the LFO issue. They included Pakistan Awami Tehrik leader Dr Tahirul Qadri, Pakistan Tehrik-i-Insaaf leader Imran Khan, PML-Z leader Ijazul Haq, PML-J leader Hamid Nasir Chattha, Pashtunkhwa Milli Awami Party leader Mehmud Khan Achakzai, Abdur Rauf Mengal of BNP (Mengal) and even PPP (Patriots) group’s Sher Afgan Niazi.

MMA leader defended the decision of various political parties of contesting elections under LFO, saying laws under which former dictators held elections were later brought to parliament for approval.

He said the issue of LFO was discussed in detail by the opposition parliamentary parties on the invitation of MMA before the inaugural session of National Assembly and everyone, including the PML-Q, had agreed that the 1973 Constitution would not be made controversial and the supremacy of parliament would not be compromised.

He recalled that the inaugural assembly session’s presiding officer Elahi Bakhsh Soomro had told house members they were being administered oath strictly under the 1973 Constitution and the same was acknowledged by Dr Sher Afgan Niazi after studying the wording of the oath.

He said the opposition protest would continue till the government agreed to delete the LFO from the original copy of the Constitution. The supremacy of parliament, he said, could only be guaranteed by restoring its right to legislate and make constitutional amendments.

Earlier in a separate chat with reporters, MMA parliamentary leader Qazi Hussain Ahmed said the protest campaign launched by the combined opposition inside the assembly could take shape of a countrywide drive against the Musharraf government.

Asked whether the opposition campaign could result in a dissolution of the elected parliament, he said: “General Musharraf will himself be dissolved before he dissolves the assemblies”.

Asked about his earlier declaration to resign his assembly seat if the LFO was accepted as part of the Constitution, he said he was bound by the decisions of the MMA and could not flout them.

He said that by agitating against the LFO for the sake of restoration of the Constitution as it stood before its suspension on October 12, 1999, the opposition wanted to restore the real strength and respect of Prime Minister Jamali, Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain and Speaker Hussain.

PML-N parliamentary leader Makhdoom Javed Hashmi said the copy of the Constitution provided to members was not the one framed by the elected parliament but it was authored by Gen Musharraf or precisely by former National Reconstruction Bureau chief, Tanvir Naqvi.

PPP leader Makhdoom Amin Fahim said: “We are representatives of the masses and are doing what the people at large want of us.”

He said his party was one with other opposition parties in rejecting the LFO as part of the Constitution because legislation was the right of parliament and could not be altered or given to an individual.