Please Visit our Sponsor (Ads open in separate window)
MMA withdraws from centre stage PRIME Minister Mir Zafarullah Khan Jamali on Monday succeeded in delivering his long awaited speech on the most vital issue of the day — Iraq. On the other hand, the opposition on its part succeeded on the third day running in disrupting the proceedings of the house with shouts of ‘No-LFO-no’ and ‘Go- Musharraf-go’. That most of what the PM said could not be heard was of no consequence because his relevant remarks were timed to coincide with the fall in the pitch of the clamour. And what was heard was interpreted in the galleries to mean that Pakistan would not vote in favour of the US resolution for war against Iraq in the UNSC. Clearly, negotiations on the issue of the LFO between the government and the opposition which were going on all through the day had failed. The outcome of these meetings was played out on the floor of the assembly at around 7:15pm by all the players involved and with the speaker announcing before he gave the floor to the prime minister that the negotiations would continue. The theme of the PM’s speech gave an idea as to why the MMA members appeared rather subdued on Monday when their other colleagues from the PPP and PML-N occupied the centre stage at the speaker’s rostrum to shout down the PM and disrupt the proceedings. Some MMA members were also there but for the most part they remained silent spectators. According to the PML-Q sources, the MMA was said to have agreed to listen to the PM’s speech in silence. The same sources quoting Liaquat Baloch said the negotiations between the government and the opposition were going on smoothly and that the MMA leader felt that there was some relaxation in the position of the government side on the LFO. But the developments of the day do not evince any such thing. In fact, sources close to the PPP said the government was just trying to buy time and had no intentions of giving in to the opposition’s demand on the LFO or the president’s uniform. The prime minister entered the house at around 5:30pm when it was still not in session and quickly went into a deep huddle with former president Farooq Ahmed Khan Leghari and former speaker Nasir Chattha. Later, when this meeting broke off one saw Maulana Fazlur Rehman getting together with Mr Leghari. This looked highly intriguing. One felt as if the MMA leader was being subjected to last minute persuasions by the former president. When the fourth session began midway through the last week of last month, things were not all that happy for the opposition as the two major groups — the PPP and the MMA — were seen fighting it out for the slot of the leader of opposition in the house. The two were also poles apart on the Iraq crisis and other foreign policy issues and it was more than obvious that the PPP and the MMA would be taking diametrically opposite positions on Iraq during the proposed debate on foreign policy in the NA during the session. However, the LFO rumpus that gripped the house early last week seems to have changed all this. The opposition got together in no time. It all looked so spontaneous. Forgotten were the differences over the opposition leader’s slot or the contradictions in their respective foreign policy stances. Though the PPP did not join the million march of the MMA either in Karachi or in Rawalpindi, nobody appears to be making an issue out of it. Times had changed so drastically since the LFO crisis emerged in the NA that the PPP, which had gone into a kind of political hibernation since the post-election heady days when Makhdoom Amin Fahim of Hala was being seen strutting around giving prime ministerial looks, seemed to be enjoying its new role of playing second fiddle to the MMA with which it had refused to join hands to form the government led by Maulana Fazlur Rehman of the JUI-F at the Centre. When told that if things don’t normalize inside the house quickly, the president may even consider dismissing new parliament, Naveed Qamar, a PPP MNA from Hyderabad, dismissed the warning with a ‘So what?’ and followed it up with: “You see, we have suffered dismissals four times in the last 10 years, one more would hardly bring down the skies!” Tailpiece: According to NA grapevine, President General Pervez Musharraf spent a good part of the day inside parliament building on Monday meeting parliamentarians. No official confirmation could be obtained about this, though. The then president General Ziaul Haq had acquired the habit of coming to the State Bank building every evening throughout the debate on 8th Amendment. Are we seeing a replay of a 17-year-old drama? Please Visit our Sponsor (Ads open in separate window)
