0
ISLAMABAD, Feb 23: The protesting opposition in the Senate on Monday raised a question of the breach of privilege against the government that it said had blocked a seminar at the parliamentary lodges in Islamabad on Sunday and later booked politicians for speaking in the open air.
After an uproarious start of the upper house proceedings, during which Interior Minister Faisal Saleh Hayat denied any breach of privilege had happened, Chairman Mohammedmian Soomro admitted three privilege motions about the affair. The chief said the motions would be considered by a house privilege committee after it was formed.
Police confirmed that they had registered a case against 25 political figures for allegedly violating an almost permanent ban on the assembly of more than four people in the capital and for disturbing public order after they addressed the open air seminar organized by the nationalist parties grouped in the Pakistan Oppressed Nations Movement (PONM).
PONM leaders said they had to meet in the open after being blocked from assembling in a hall of the parliamentary lodges. Two identical privilege motions tabled by five senators, Asfandyar Wali, Sanaullah Baloch and Raza Mohammad Raza of PONM, and Saadia Abbasi and Khawaja Mohammad Akbar of the Alliance for the Restoration of Democracy, accused police and unidentified intelligence agencies of besieging the parliamentary lodges on Sunday and holding several parliamentarians "hostages" for about 10 hours.
In a separate privilege motion, Mohammad Azam Khan Swati of the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal complained that he was stopped from entering the parliamentary lodges after he returned from a visit to Abbottabad although he was unaware at the time of what was happening inside the premises.
MINISTER SEES NO BREACH: "No breach of privilege has occurred," Interior Minister Faisal Saleh Hayat said after a blistering speech by Sanaullah Baloch (BNP-Mengal) who said parliamentarians were being treated as "third-rate citizens" by those subverting parliament and the Constitution.
But in what appeared to be a small retraction, the minister said he was ready to look into the matter "if at all any breach (of privilege) had happened".
Mr Hayat declined to go into the details of what he called a "very unfortunate" happening on Sunday, when he said speakers at the PONM seminar had made derogatory remarks about Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah.
He said the parliamentary lodges, located across the parliament house on Islamabad's Constitution Avenue, were a only residential facility for the parliamenterians and no other activity could be held there without the permission of the National Assembly speaker.
An assembly outside the lodges would be a violation of the law, the minister said about the ban imposed in Islamabad almost permanently under Section 144 of the Criminal Procedure Code.
Mr Baloch in his speech said police and intelligence agencies had blocked the seminar from being held inside a hall of the parliamentary lodges despite an earlier permission given by the National Assembly speaker and secretary.
He accused authorities of turning the "whole of Islamabad into a fireball" with rage over the seminar held to discuss the country's constitutional problems and said all gates around the parliamentary lodges were locked at 6am on Sunday barring any entry into or exit from the premises.
Mrs Gulshan Saeed (PML-Q, Punjab) repeatedly interrupted Mr Baloch's tirade and accused unspecified participants of the seminar of "speaking about breaking of Pakistan". However, the uproar subsided after the chairman admitted the privilege motions, saying that they would all be clubbed together and referred to the house standing committee on privileges whenever it was formed.
No Senate standing committees have yet been formed although a year has passed after the election of the upper house. But Senate deputy chairman Khalilur Rehman told the house last week he expected that committees would be formed within a week.
EDHI CALL NUMBER: Before the start of the second day of the Senate debate on President Pervez Musharraf's address to parliament last month, former information minister Nisar Ahmad Memon (PML-Q, Sindh) called for a reversal of what he called an unfair decision of the Pakistan Telecom Authority to change the Edhi Foundation's toll-free emergency telephone call number of 115 to chargeable 1150.
Speaking on a point of order, Mr Memon said the change would cause problems to the people calling Edhi ambulances in emergency. Leader of the house Wasim Sajjad promised to convey the concern voiced by Mr Memon to the authorities concerned.
