ISLAMABAD, April 20: Chief coordinator Pakistan Muslim League (N) Ahsan Iqbal has criticized the government for deliberately confusing the LFO issue. “The real issue is whether parliament alone is the lawmaker or a person forcibly occupying the government can also be the lawmaker,” he said in a statement issued here on Sunday.

“Opposition parties are not refusing to start a dialogue but are opposing the right of a general to amend laws. Dialogue over LFO can take place in parliament when government presents it in form of a bill. The government insists that LFO doesn’t require approval of parliament and that it has already become part of the constitution. With this position, what kind of dialogue can takes place? It is one person’s ego, which has jammed the parliamentary process,” he added.

He said LFO debate struck at the heart of the constitutional governance in Pakistan. Due to LFO, he said, today the nation stood divided over the constitution as both the government and the opposition took oath in the Senate of different versions of the constitution. Such controversies are deadly for the federation, he added.

Mr Iqbal said even if it was conceded that the Supreme Court had allowed Gen Musharraf permission to amend the constitution in the absence of parliament, it was a universal practice that as and when an individual exercised any power of an institution either for its absence or urgency of situation, in the first available instance all such decisions had to be presented before the concerned forum for revalidation when it was available.

“The most obvious example is of issuance of an ordinance, where president has the power to issue law on the grounds of urgency but then it has to be approved by parliament, otherwise ordinance lapses. Here we are talking of constitutional amendments, which General Musharraf is refusing to present before parliament for approval.”

Mr Iqbal said all amendments by the previous military dictators were finally presented before parliament, but this military government was taking a new line, which had put one person over and above 140 million people and all the national institutions.

He said if Gen Musharraf’s agenda was to strengthen the national institutions, as he had said on numerous occasions, he must accept the supremacy of parliament as the legitimate law- making body.