MMA won’t vote for Musharraf: Qazi: Protest drive if deadline not met
By Our Staff Reporter
ISLAMABAD, Dec 9: The Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal on Tuesday threatened to go ahead with its protest movement against President Gen Pervez Musharraf as planned and continue it till his fall from power, if the government failed to present the draft amendment bill in parliament by Dec 17.
After a meeting of its supreme council, the MMA made it clear that it would not accept anything other than the package agreed with the government in Lahore on Sept 6 and warned it to desist from trying to make the alliance give vote of confidence to Gen Musharraf as a tradeoff for the bill.
It decided to remain in contact with other opposition groups in this regard.
The alliance denied reports that its president Maulana Shah Ahmed Noorani had held any formal meeting with Gen Musharraf on Monday night. The Maulana told the meeting that “it was a chance meeting at the dinner hosted for the visiting president of Kazakhstan, which was neither preplanned nor carried any political importance.”
MMA parliamentary leader in the National Assembly Qazi Hussain Ahmed said the alliance was united in its stand against the Legal Framework Order despite the government’s efforts to break it.
During a press briefing after the meeting he said the MMA would accept Gen Musharraf as the president after he got the vote of confidence from the electoral college only as a last resort to resolve the crisis. The meeting endorsed the steering committee’s report about the launching of a movement.
Mr Ahmed said the compromise on amending the Constitution to give Gen Musharraf a chance to get his tenure endorsed by the electoral college had come out of government’s fear that the electoral college might reject him in elections.
He said the government’s insistence that the alliance give vote of confidence to Gen Musharraf would complicate things and spoil the environment being created to give the president a safe passage.
He said the alliance was poles apart with the government on most of its domestic and foreign policies while giving Gen Musharraf a vote of confidence would mean that it endorsed his policies.
He demanded that the government bring the amendment bill to parliament immediately if it was sincere in fulfilling the promises which Pakistan Muslim League leader Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain and other representatives of Gen Musharraf had made with the MMA recently.
He said the MMA council would meet in Multan on Dec 17 to review the situation before launching its movement from Dera Ghazi Khan on Dec 18.
The alliance’s leader Liaqat Baloch said the meeting felt that if the government failed to meet the deadline, the MMA should launch its movement and continue it till the ouster of the president.
He said the alliance would resist any attempt to plant another general in the president’s place.
The MMA reiterated its decision to file a requisition in collaboration with other opposition parties for summoning of a National Assembly session in a few days.
He said the MMA leadership would start the movement by marching to Dera Ghazi Khan from the Chenab Bridge in Muzaffargarh on Dec 18 and it would turn into a mass contact campaign.
The council condemned the arrest of MMA leader Allama Sajid Naqvi and criticized the government for its failure to submit a report on the murder of MNA Maulana Azam Tariq. It demanded his immediate release and said the police had failed to bring any charge-sheet against him after 25 days of investigation.
The alliance expressed its determination to play its role in the elimination of sectarianism.
MMA deputy parliamentary leader Hafiz Hussain Ahmed challenged Interior Minister Faisal Saleh Hayat to implement his threat of arresting the alliance’s leaders in the Javed Hashmi case. He demanded that Mr Hayat be included in the investigation of Maulana Tariq’s murder.
Maulana Noorani presided over the meeting which was attended by Maulana Fazlur Rahman, Maulana Samiul Haq, Prof Sajid Mir and Maulana Abdul Jalil Naqvi.
