March 10, 2003	Monday	Muharram 6, 1424

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ISLAMABAD, March 9: Opposition parties in the National Assembly will carry on an obstructive protest against sweeping presidential powers when the lower house resumes its session on Monday after a two-day recess, opposition sources said on Sunday.

Monday is also the day which ruling Pakistan Muslim League-Q’s president Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain has proposed for the start of a dialogue with the opposition parties to settle the row over President Pervez Musharraf’s Legal Framework Order, which has paralyzed the National Assembly since last Wednesday.

But opposition sources said no time had yet been set for the dialogue, which the ruling party offered after the opposition parties refused to allow the 342-seat National Assembly to conduct normal business unless the government agreed to delete the LFO from the Constitution.

“The opposition has decided to continue our protest,” a spokesman for People’s Party Parliamentarians (PPP), Farhatullah Babar, told Dawn on Sunday while the PML-Q leader has said Monday could be the last day of the current National Assembly session that began on February 26.

But he said if the planned government-opposition meeting was held on Monday and “if things move forward then we will see” about the next move.

However he said the PML-Q had not conveyed to the opposition either the time or the venue of the dialogue.

On Friday, the opposition parties agreed to talk to the government outside the National Assembly but vowed to continue their protest inside the house against sweeping powers the LFO decrees, now made part of the Constitution, give to President Pervez Musharraf.

For its second successive sitting after a day’s recess, the house failed to conduct any business on Friday because of an opposition uproar marked by anti-LFO and anti-Musharraf slogan-chanting and was later adjourned until 5pm on Monday.

Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain told Dawn on Saturday that the National Assembly session was likely to be prorogued on Monday evening and the two sides could continue talking with each other over the LFO either in Islamabad or Lahore.

The opposition parties — including the People’s Party Parliamentarians and Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal (MMA), Pakistan Muslim League-N and their smaller allies — have also threatened a similar deadlock in the newly elected 100-seat Senate, where they say their more than 40 members would not take oath under the LFO-amended Constitution when the upper house meets for its inaugural session on Wednesday.

The Senate secretariat announced on Sunday that election for the Senate chairman and deputy chairman would be held the same day, raising the prospect that the opposition Senators-elect will not be able to stand or vote for the two offices if they did not take oath as house members.

“We will take oath only under the 1973 Constitution,” said Babar, who is also PPP Senator-elect from the NWFP. “We are working out a strategy.”

While the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal has named its chief Maulana Shah Ahmed Noorani as its parliamentary leader in the Senate, Babar said the PPP parliamentary party in the Senate would meet on Monday evening to decide about its own leader in the upper house.

The opposition parties say they could agree to some constitutional amendments made by the LFO such as reduction in the voting age to 18 from 21, and increase of special women’s seats in parliament and provincial assemblies.

But they want to throw out the LFO because of powers it gives to Gen Musharraf to remain president and army chief for five more years, head an overseeing military-civilian National Security Council, dissolve parliament and sack prime ministers.

Other contentious LFO clauses include one that gives the president the previously prime ministerial powers to appoint armed forces chiefs and provincial governors who, in turn, are empowered to dissolve the provincial assemblies and sack chief ministers.