ISLAMABAD, April 21: Opposition protests against presidential powers turned harder and louder in the National Assembly on Monday despite fresh government offers for talks to settle a row that has paralyzed parliament.
It was another day of opposition shouting against President Pervez Musharraf and the Legal Framework Order as the 342-seat lower house met in the evening for its current session’s third sitting, which lasted only 35 minutes.
But the shouts of “No LFO, no”, and “Go Musharraf, go” by opposition members were accompanied by louder thumping of desks with leather-bound folders or notebooks — a trick first used by their counterparts in the Senate on Friday with a telling effect.
While the government offered talks to the combined opposition to settle differences over the LFO, it also made an odd move to belittle the protest by going ahead with the business put on the agenda and passed the first legislation of Prime Minister Zafarullah Khan Jamali’s government despite the overwhelming noise.
Mr Jamali told reporters outside the house that within the next two days invitation for talks — previously restricted to MMA — would go to the combined opposition, which also includes the PPP, the PML-N and their smaller regional allies.
The offer was repeated inside the noisy house by the president of the ruling PML-Q, Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain.
But opposition leaders appeared sceptical of the offer, citing what they called the failure of the ruling coalition to honour previous promises of talks, and said they would not accept the government argument that the LFO had already become part of the Constitution.
PPP leader Makhdoom Amin Fahim, MMA secretary-general Maulana Fazlur Rehman and PML-N acting president Makhdoom Javed Hashmi also denounced the government for bulldozing a bill based on a previously promulgated ordinance while the big opposition was protesting on the LFO.
As the opposition members were busy shouting, the unexplained Removal from Service (Special Powers) (Amendment) Ordinance, 2003, was passed as a bill without discussion, with only ruling coalition members responding in the affirmative to motions moved by piloting Minister of State for Law, Justice, Human Rights and Parliamentary Affairs Mohammad Raza Hayat Hiraj.
“This is bad legislation,” PML-N leader Javed Hashmi said of the move and accused Speaker Chaudhry Amir Hussain of partiality and contempt of his own office.
“If the speaker does not remain neutral, then the house cannot be run,” he said and threatened severer protests in the National Assembly, which was adjourned until 5pm on Tuesday.
As on its previous two sittings on Tuesday and Friday, the opposition members stood up on their seats and began chanting “No LFO, no” and “Go Musharraf, go” as soon as the Speaker called for the start of the question hours after a “qari” recited verses from the Holy Quran to start the proceedings.
Speaker Hussain called out all the questions put on the agenda for replies but dropped most of them because opposition members did not ask them.
In the same manner he also announced leave applications of various members and their acceptance.
The shouts and desk-thumping turned louder as Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain repeated his hardly audible offer for dialogue to the opposition and said the government was also prepared for a debate on the LFO inside the assembly.
But the opposition parties have already rejected government suggestions that they bring a private constitution amendment bill if they did not want the LFO, and say they do not accept the document as part of the Constitution and the government should bring it to parliament for approval like any other constitutional amendment.
