August 25, 2003	Monday	Jumadi-us-Sani 26

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ISLAMABAD, Aug 24: Questions of honour and chivalry are likely to fray tempers when the National Assembly meets on Monday.

Both the ruling coalition and opposition parties have planned to raise the issue of alleged moral violations by men or women from either side during an opposition protest against the LFO in the house on Friday.

The issue arises from an altercation between the minister of state for parliamentary affairs Mohammad Raza Hayat Hiraj and PPP MNA Naheed Khan.

Political sources said they feared the expected wordy duels between the opposition and treasury benches over rival privilege motions could turn into a repeat of or something worse than what happened on Friday when the lawmakers came close to fist-fights while trading insults.

Both sides accuse each other of hurling abuses at each other. The opposition accuses Mr Hiraj, one of the PPP defectors who formed PPP-Patriots, of trying to attack Ms Khan and using abusive language. It also accuses PPP-Patriots parliamentary leader Sher Afgan Niazi of making an obscene gesture. Both men deny the charges.

Mr Hiraj says he was provoked by abusive language used against him by Ms Khan amid angry exchanges between the two sides over the recent verdict of a Swiss magistrate against former prime minister Benazir Bhutto for money-laundering that she denies.

Ms Khan, a political secretary of Ms Bhutto, said she had only threatened to slap the advancing minister if he came close to her.

Mr Hiraj later requested Speaker Chaudhry Amir Hussain in an opposition-less house to penalize Ms Khan for her diction she had allegedly used about some members of the treasury benches at least thrice.

He is likely to follow the speaker’s advice to move a written privilege motion on Monday, as was done against him on Saturday by 15 members of the PPP and PML-N. The MMA has also vowed to support Ms Khan’s cause through a privilege motion of its own. “It is no chivalry to attack a woman,” says MMA’s Hafiz Hussain Ahmed, who has also threatened a befitting reply outside the parliament to Mr Niazi for his alleged gesture.

Passions over the LFO have been the main cause for unruly scenes in the National Assembly. But political sources place part of the blame for Friday’s incident on a lack of cohesion in the ruling alliance.

Prime Minister Jamali, who has reportedly complained about lack of support from coalition members, did not come to the first sitting of the current session on Wednesday and was on a visit to Saudi Arabia when Friday’s incident happened.

PML-Q leader Shujaat Hussain has also been absent from both the sittings while the speaker on Friday asked the ruling coalition to ensure the presence of ministers in the house unless they are out of the capital on official business.

ARD sources accuse the speaker of delaying the nomination of an opposition leader to let the government benefit from rival claims to the office made by the 81-seat ARD and 67-seat MMA.