ISLAMABAD, June 25: President Pervez Musharraf on Wednesday summoned the National Assembly to meet on Saturday to decide on an opposition move to vote out Speaker Chaudhry Amir Hussain.

As the assembly secretariat said the lower house would meet at 11am, Prime Minister Zafarullah Khan Jamali urged opposition parties to withdraw their no-confidence motion seeking removal of the speaker for giving a ruling to uphold the Legal Framework Order.

Both the ruling coalition and opposition parties have made rival claims about the likely outcome of only the second no-confidence motion that a NA speaker will face in the country’s parliamentary history.

Parliamentary sources said there seemed to be no chance of Mr Hussain losing his job because of the sure support of the ruling coalition’s comfortable majority of more than 190 members in the 342-seat house.

However, the sources said the speaker would emerge badly bruised from the likely acrimonious debate on a controversy that may haunt him even beyond his term.

During a visit to Multan on Wednesday, Mr Jamali predicted a failure of the opposition move, which his government said was mainly aimed to embarrass President Musharraf during his current four-nation tour by focusing on sweeping powers he has assumed by amending the Constitution through the LFO.

But the prime minister said he would still appeal to the opposition parties to withdraw the motion “in the interest of the country and democracy”.

Tensions have been rising between the two sides since their talks to resolve their differences over the LFO deadlocked early this month and the opposition parties continued their anti-LFO protest by boycotting budget debates in both houses of parliament.

However, opposition parties seemed to have scrambled to consider their next moves. The departure of Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal secretary-general Maulana Fazlur Rehman for France early on Wednesday sparked speculation whether he would miss the no-confidence debate.

But another MMA leader in the assembly, Hafiz Hussain Ahmed, told Dawn that Maulana Fazl was due to return before the NA session after attending a conference organized by Jamiat-i-Dawa Islamia.

Leaders of opposition parties present in Islamabad began informal meetings immediately after the session was announced.

The parliamentary group of the People’s Party Parliamentarians will meet on Friday to discuss their line of action for the crucial session, party spokesman Senator Farhatullah Babar said.

He said the combined opposition, which includes the MMA, the PML-N and their smaller regional allies, might meet on Friday or on Saturday before the start of the session to consider their moves amid reports that the ruling coalition members may not take part in the voting on the motion.

Mr Babar said the opposition might consider another no- confidence motion if the present move failed. “But it will depend on a decision by all opposition parties,” he said, adding a lot would depend on whether the ruling coalition would allow its members to take part in the secret ballot on the motion.

He hoped many of the treasury members would vote in favour of the motion if they were allowed to take part in the voting.

Information and Broadcasting Minister Shaikh Rashid Ahmed seemed to confirm reports that the ruling coalition, led by the PML-Q, would abstain from voting, which he said would leave the opposition far short of the required 172-member majority.

“We will all stand up to give the speaker a vote of confidence,” he said in an interview with a private television channel.

“Many of their (opposition) members are in contact with us,” the minister claimed.

Hafiz Hussain Ahmed said in a television interview that the opposition would make a maximum show of its strength on June 28. He acknowledged the government had the numerical majority in the house but said the speaker would lose the moral right to remain in office after some 165 members would have expressed no confidence in him.

He said the government would demonstrate a no-confidence in it own members if it did not allow them to take part in the voting.

The other National Assembly speaker who faced a no-confidence motion was Syed Fakhr Imam, who was ousted nearly 14 years ago in a move backed by then military president Mohammed Ziaul Haq.

That action was taken after Mr Imam sent to the Election Commission a reference that had sought disqualification of then prime minister Mohammed Khan Junejo and some of his colleagues for forming a political party after being elected to parliament in the 1985 non-party election.

At present, the opposition parties accuse the speaker of giving the ruling under the government pressure to give President Musharraf an additional argument to defend the LFO during his visit to Britain, the United States, France and Germany.

The speaker denies this. He says he has given a ruling that had been pending for a long time after some opposition members had questioned his pro-LFO statement before reporters in November.