June 11, 2003	Wednesday	Rabi-us-Sani 10, 1424

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ISLAMABAD, June 10: Opposition parties protesting against the controversial Legal Framework Order stormed out of both houses of parliament on Tuesday to boycott a simultaneous debate on the federal budget for fiscal 2003-04.

But the parties comprising what they describe as the combined opposition said they were not boycotting the National Assembly and the Senate and their members would go their every day but would abstain from the budget debate unless the government resolved the dispute over the LFO.

The leaders of the ruling Pakistan Muslim League (Quaid) and government ministers later tried but failed to persuade the opposition parties to end their boycott, which was not joined by the Awami National Party that has two members in the Senate and won some praise from the treasury benches for staying in.

“No Musharraf, Go Musharraf” and “no LFO no”, chanted the opposition members as they walked out of the two houses at about the same time in the morning after engaging in brief desk-thumping and handing over budget documents to the staff of the National Assembly speaker and the Senate chairman.

This was a slight change from the previous practice of slogan-shouting and desk-thumping throughout a sitting as happened on the opening day of the budget sessions of both houses on Saturday and some previous sessions deadlocked by the opposition protests.

The opposition groups — including the People’s Party Parliamentarians, the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal and Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) — later told a news conference they were boycotting the budget debate because of the government’s attitude what they said was blocking a settlement on the LFO.

“It was because of the government’s rigidity that we have decided to abstain from the budget debate,” PPP deputy leader in the National Assembly Shah Mahmood Qureshi said.

Opposition leaders, including MMA’s Maulana Shah Ahmad Noorani and Maulana Fazlur Rehman and PML-N acting president Javed Hashmi, accused Prime Minister Zafarullah Khan Jamali of failing to convene a promised meeting of the leaders of all opposition parties to consider the recommendations of a bipartisan parliamentary committee that deliberated on the LFO last month.

The opposition has vowed not to allow any legislative business in parliament until a settlement on the LFO.

“We will participate (in the process) if the meeting of heads of parties is called, there is an understanding and the LFO is brought to parliament for approval,” Maulana Fazlur Rehman said.

The opposition news conference turned into a brief open dialogue with the government as PML-Q president Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain, leader of house in the Senate Wasim Sajjad, Finance Minister Shaukat Aziz, and PML-Q chief whip and Labour and Manpower Minister Abdul Sattar Laleka arrived to persuade the opposition parties to end their boycott. But most of the talking was done from the opposition.

The opposition rejected a proposal from the PML-Q leader to treat the budget and the LFO separately.

“The LFO has made the whole budget process controversial,” an MMA leader, Liaqat Baloch, said, referring to the presentation of the budget also before the Senate for the first time for submitting non-binding recommendations to the National Assembly as provided by the LFO-amended constitution.

The opposition refusal left the treasury benches no choice but to carry on an almost one-sided budget debate.

ANP EXPLANATION: ANP leader Senator Asfandyar Wali told Dawn that he and his party’s only other Senator, Ilyas Bilour, had not boycotted the debate in the upper house because they were not a party to the combined opposition decision.

But he said the ANP had its “reservations” about the LFO and subscribed to the stand of other opposition parties that this package of presidential decrees could not become part of the Constitution unless passed by a two-thirds majority in both houses of parliament.

JAMALI IN OPPOSITION LEADER’S SEAT: Amid a little disorder in the house following the opposition walkout, Prime Minister Jamali briefly occupied the still-vacant seat reserved for the opposition leader to chat with his ally and PML-C leader Hamid Nasir Chattha, who had come over to the next seat of absent PPP leader Amin Fahim.