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ISLAMABAD, Aug 16: The Alliance for the Restoration of Democracy (ARD) has not yet decided to support the move of the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal (MMA) to requisition the National Assembly session, sources told Dawn here on Saturday.
The sources said the MMA had not yet contacted the ARD for requisitioning the National Assembly session, but the alliance had decided not to support any such move without first finalizing the agenda and mode of protest in the assembly.
They said first the MMA would have to clarify whether it would support the ARD inside the assembly during the protest against the Legal Framework Order (LFO) or it wanted to requisition the session to “merely please the rulers”.
They were of the view that the MMA alone could not requisition the session as it did not have the support of 87 MNAs required to do so.
“Either, the MMA will have to contact the ARD or any party of the ruling coalition in order to requisition the National Assembly session,” the source added.
They said the People’s Party Parliamentarians and the Pakistan Muslim League-N, two major component parties of the ARD, were already facing criticism from their members for joining hands with the MMA and tagging along with it during the budget session. If the MMA, they observed, wanted to come in the fold of combined opposition again, then this time the ARD would be in the driving seat.
If the MMA wanted to convene the National Assembly as a goodwill gesture to the government, then it should ask the members of the ruling benches to sign the requisition notice.
They said after holding so many rounds of talks with the government, the MMA should have by now become aware of the fact that the government was not sincere in resolving the LFO issue.
ARD LEADER: When contacted, ARD parliamentary group Secretary in the National Assembly Izhar Amrohvi said first the MMA should be clear in its mind and then decide once for all whether to join the government or the opposition.
He said Prime Minister Mir Zafarullah Khan Jamali’s statement that only General Musharraf would decide about the uniform showed that the government had closed the doors on talks.
The ARD, Mr Amrohvi said, would continue its protest against the LFO and president’s uniform inside the parliament even without the MMA’s support. He said the ARD would like to hold a meeting with the MMA leadership to chalk out a joint strategy for the protest inside the assembly before taking any decision to requisition the session.
He was of the view that the government was in deep trouble as it wanted to convene the NA session as early as possible and on the other hand it was afraid of the opposition’s protest.
The ARD leader feared the government would not be able to hold the required number of sessions in a parliamentary year and it would be another violation of the constitution by the military-led Jamali government.
