November 11, 2003	Tuesday	Ramazan 15, 1424

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ISLAMABAD, Nov 10: The National Assembly on Monday completed a mandatory calendar of a largely wasted but a historic shouting parliamentary year amid continuing opposition protests against presidential powers and the arrest of ARD president Javed Hashmi.

But after a brief sitting marked by opposition slogan-chanting and some self-praise by the treasury benches, the government allowed the assembly to meet for one more day on Tuesday to dispose of private members’ business, when President Pervez Musharraf is likely to prorogue the lower house.

To celebrate the assembly’s achievement of completing the constitutional requirement of remaining in session for at least 130 days in a parliamentary year, speaker Chaudhry Amir Hussain feted members of the treasury benches at an Iftar dinner, which was boycotted by opposition parties accusing him of partiality.

The opposition parties have never been happy with the speaker since his election in November last year at the start of a newly elected 342-seat house’s parliamentary year and they brought an unsuccessful no-confidence move last June to oust him.

But his relations with the opposition deteriorated recently because of his refusal to order production of Mr Hashmi in the house after the politician — also acting president of PML-N and parliamentary leader of the ARD — was arrested 13 days ago on charges including sedition and attempt to incite mutiny.

“Go speaker, go”, “powerless speaker is not acceptable”, opposition members chanted as they took some 50 minutes of an hour-long sitting shouting slogans mainly for the release of Mr Javed Hashmi and against the president as they stood in a semi-circle in front of the speaker’s rostrum before walking out of the house.

Though the opposition parties accused the speaker of a general partiality against them, opposition sources said his failure to order Mr Hashmi’s presence in the house was the immediate cause of the boycott of his dinner at the parliament house.

Mr Aitzaz Ahsan, a prominent member of the PPP, said opposition could have attended the dinner if the speaker had issued the production order for Mr Hashmi, whose family members say none of them or his lawyers have been allowed to see him since he was picked up from his Parliament Lodges flat on October 29.

“The speaker just asked me to come to his Iftar party and I told him ‘you issue the production order... and I will bring the whole opposition’,” Mr Ahsan told reporters about what he called a chance meeting with the speaker after the house was adjourned until 11am on Tuesday.