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| 08 March 2004 | Monday | 16 Muharram 1425 |
War of words feared in NA
ISLAMABAD, March 7: The National Assembly begins on Monday what could be an acrimonious spring session that promises wordy duels focused on President Pervez Musharraf and some law-making as well after a largely wasted more than one year of its life.
Although the immediate task before the 342-seat lower house is a potentially long debate on the president's address to parliament last month, the government has also promised to bring some legislative business and consider forming long-delayed house standing committees that must scrutinize all new laws before being passed. However, it was still unknown when the government will bring to parliament its most important legislation on the cards - a bill to revive the controversial National Security Council (NSC) that is designed to give military a permanent legal role in Pakistan's governance.
While launching predictably bitter attacks against the policies and sweeping powers of the president during the debate on his Jan 17 speech to a joint sitting of parliament that they had greeted with protests, opposition parties likely to press their demand for a proportional representation on the standing committees and rival claims to the still-vacant office of the leader of opposition.
But when the session begins at 5pm on Monday, the opposition parties - as they did at the start of the Senate session last moth - are likely to raise a discussion on the raging nuclear proliferation scandal that has sounded a global alarm and put the father of the country's nuclear bomb, Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan, and some of his colleagues under detention.
The opposition may also seek discussions - possibly through adjournment motions or simply points of order - on the massacre of more than 40 people during an Ashura mourning procession in Quetta last week and military operations carried out in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata) to hunt for militants of Al Qaeda network and the Taliban movement from Afghanistan and their local harbourers.
The debates on the president's speech and the nuclear scandal are likely to generate a lot of heat between the ruling coalition praisers of government policies and opposition critics. But the sound and fury inside the parliament house may not be very absorbing for television viewers and newspaper readers while they have already heard all the parties on all these issues and the main attraction in the coming days will be the first home cricket series with India after 15 years.
The ruling coalition, led by the PML-Q, is unlikely to match the eloquence of some opposition stalwarts like Aitzaz Ahsan and Shah Mahmood Qureshi of the People's Party Parliamentarians (PPP), Maulana Fazlur Rehman and Qazi Hussain Ahmed of the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal, and Mahmood Khan Achakzai of the Pukhtunkhwa Milli Awami Party. But that will hardly make any difference about the fate of a planned government motion to express gratitude to the president for his speech, which will be carried by the ruling coalition's comfortable majority in the house.
NSC CONTROVERSY: The government is certain to come under fire also when it brings the bill on the NSC, which is sought to be revived through an act of parliament rather than being a creation of the Constitution, as agreed between the ruling coalition and the MMA in a deal that gave parliamentary approval to the president's controversial LFO in December.
Government spokesmen said last week the NSC bill was still being vetted by the law ministry after approval of a draft by the cabinet last month and it would be in line with terms agreed with the MMA. But the MMA, already being accused by its former opposition friends of betrayal by helping the government to have a slightly amended LFO passed by a two-thirds majority in both houses of parliament after more than one year of noisy protests, now refuses to support the NSC bill.
CLAIMS FOR OPPOSITION LEADER: Rival claims have been made to the office of the opposition leader, who will also be a member of the planned NSC, which will be headed by the president and will include the prime minister, National Assembly speaker and Senate chairman, provincial chief ministers, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff committee and heads of the three armed forces.
Parties grouped in the opposition Alliance for the Restoration of Democracy and their smaller allies, who have a combined strength of 81 in the house, have asked National Assembly speaker Chaudhry Amir Hussain to recognize their nominee - PPP president Makhdoom Amin Fahim - as the leader of opposition on the ground that they form the largest opposition group in the house.
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