ISLAMABAD, April 25: Guns fell silent in the National Assembly on Friday as the 342-seat lower house adjourned for three days to help cool tempers for talks between the ruling and opposition parties to end a bitter row over sweeping presidential powers.
The political ceasefire came hours before a scheduled meeting between high-level teams of the two sides at the Prime Minister’s House in Islamabad to settle their sharp differences over the Legal Framework Order (LFO) that gives President Gen Pervez Musharraf controversial powers.
Following agreement between both sides, Speaker Chaudhry Amir Hussain adjourned the assembly until Monday afternoon within five minutes after it met on Friday morning, about an hour behind schedule for the fifth sitting of the current session.
There were no shouts of “No LFO, no” and “Go Musharraf, go”, which have now become an opposition war cry in a protest that has paralysed the new parliament for nearly two months.
The opposition had threatened it would continue slogan-chanting and desk-thumping even on Friday despite Prime Minister Zafarullah Jamali’s invitation to it for talks if the ruling Pakistan Muslim League-Q went ahead with its strategy to carry on the house proceedings by ignoring their protests.
But in what seemed to be a sort of opposition victory, an all-party house business advisory committee, chaired by the speaker, decided before the assembly meeting that while the government would not press its business for the day, the opposition would not protest, and the house would be adjourned until 5.30pm on Monday.
LFO CITED FOR TALKS: Although the prime minister’s identical letters of invitation to the leaders of opposition parties did not specifically mention the LFO, a brief statement by Speaker Hussain in the house went further to cite what has become the country’s most controversial document at present as the main item for the talks.
Mr Jamali’s letter said the talks at the PM House, which are likely to continue on Saturday, were meant to “promote political harmony and strengthen democratic institutions” — a move apparently designed not to let the government be seen as bending to opposition’s insistence that it will discuss only the LFO.
