December 30, 2003	Tuesday	Ziqa’ad 6, 1424

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LAHORE, Dec 29: PPP Senior Vice-President Yousaf Raza Gilani has said his party had opposed voting for Maulana Fazlur Rahman as prime minister because they knew that the MMA was B team of the army.

Maulana Fazl is the secretary-general of the MMA, a six-party religious alliance.

Speaking at a press conference on Monday, Mr Gilani, flanked by chairperson Benazir Bhutto’s spokesman Munawwar Anjum, claimed that the alliance members would indirectly join the government after becoming chairmen of the National Assembly’s standing committees.

The government, he said, was giving another favour to the MMA by withdrawing Sanad cases against its MPs.

He criticized the government for directly contacting MPs for persuading them to meet Gen Pervez Musharraf in Islamabad, terming it against the parliamentary conventions.

He said the government should have approached parliamentary leaders of respective political parties for the purpose as the conventions demanded.

Warning the likely defectors in the party during trust vote for Gen Musharraf of disciplinary action under the defection clause, he hoped that no PPP MP would vote for the general. Nor any PPP MPs, he said, would go to Islamabad for calling on Gen Musharraf.

Criticizing National Assembly speaker Chaudhry Amir Husain for his ruling that the LFO was part of the constitution, he said the government-MMA deal on the issue had exposed partiality of Mr Husain. “He had worked as a guardian of the government and not the house.”

Commenting on the forthcoming Saarc summit, he said Gen Musharraf’s meeting with Indian prime minister Vajpayee had always badly hit internal affairs of Pakistan. He recalled that before going for Agra talks Gen Musharraf had ousted elected president Rafiq Tarar on the plea that he wanted to be on equal footing with the Indian premier.

The general now wanted to get the status of an elected president by seeking vote of confidence under the same plea, he added.

He said the government should call in exiled leaders Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif before the summit to seek their advice on various national issues.

On debriefing of nuclear scientists, he demanded the government to form a parliamentary commission to probe making heroes of the nation as scapegoats.