28 March 2004	Sunday	06 Safar 1425

ISLAMABAD, March 27: Some People's Party Parliamentarians MNAs are not happy over the decision of National Assembly Speaker Chaudhry Amir Hussain to allocate time to political parties for taking part in debate on President Gen Pervez Musharraf's address to the joint sitting of parliament , sources told Dawn on Saturday.

According to the sources, the PPP MNAs are also critical of their leadership for accepting the government's proposal without taking them into confidence.

The chief whip of the PPP, Syed Khurshid Shah, and MNA Syed Naveed Qamar during a meeting of the business advisory committee before start of the debate on the president's address had agreed to the treasury members' proposal for allocation of time to political parties instead of members.

The MNAs also criticized the party's chief whip for making an agreement with the government under which the opposition would not point out quorum during the debate.

"This is a violation of the Constitution and the opposition is equally responsible for this crime as pointing out quorum is a basic constitutional right of a member," said one of the MNAs. He said how could a member be barred from using his or her constitutional right on the pretext of a so-called agreement?

The sources said under the agreement the PPP had been allocated 420 minutes. Sources in the NA Secretariat said so far 18 members of the PPP had participated in the debate and consumed 394 minutes. It means that the 41 remaining MNAs have only 26 minutes to speak.

They said according to rules each member should be given equal time. The speaker could divide time between the government and the opposition but not among various political parties, they added.

When contacted, Syed Khurshid Shah agreed that the decision to allocate time to political parties did not hold any legal ground. However, he said, the decisions of the business advisory committee were binding on treasury as well as the opposition members.

To a question, he said the government was wrong in its calculations as the PPP members still had 73 minutes for the debate. However, Mr Shah said naturally it was not possible that all PPP members would be able to speak. He said according to the understanding reached with the ruling party, the treasury members had been allocated 19 hours and the opposition parties 16 hours. Mr Shah said he would ask the speaker to give more time to the PPP members so that maximum leaders could speak.