23 October 2004	Saturday	08 Ramazan 1425

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ISLAMABAD, Oct 22: Some of the treasury members resented the government's strategy of keeping them away from the proceedings of the National Assembly when the house took up a no-confidence motion against Speaker Chaudhry Amir Hussain on Friday.

The government had chalked out a strategy to stop its members from attending the session and it was under this plan that the ruling Pakistan Muslim League (PML) convened a meeting of its parliamentary group at 10am while the National Assembly session was to start at 9am.

The treasury members started leaving the House one by one when People's Party Parliamentarians (PPP) MNA Chaudhry Aitzaz Ahsan took the floor to present the no-confidence motion on behalf of 106 opposition members.

Chief Whip Nasrullah Khan Dareshak and some other senior parliamentarians were seen roaming in the House asking each and every member to leave the House for the committee room, where Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz was to preside over a meeting. The chief ministers of Punjab, Sindh and Balochistan were also present in the galleries to monitor implementation of the programme.

Interestingly, the prime minister did not preside over any meeting and only met with some of the members in his chamber. An opposition member, while commenting on the situation, said the treasury members were roaming in the lobbies of the Parliament House as they were on a picnic.

Several opposition members, while speaking on points of order, drew the attention of the deputy speaker, Sardar Mohammad Yaqoob Khan, towards the situation and asked him to stop the members from leaving the hall.

A majority of the treasury members, including federal and state ministers, left the assembly hall, but some 25 to 35 members refused to leave the House and stayed there to hear the ongoing debate.

Prominent among those, who remained most of the time in the House were Sardar Bahadur Ahmed Khan, Riaz Hussain Pirzada, MQM MNA Dr Farooq Sattar, former prime minister Mir Zafarullah Khan Jamali, Hamid Nasir Chattha, Kashmala Tariq, Bushra Rehman, Mahnaz Rafi, Gyan Singh, Bilal Virk, Firdous Ashiq Awan, and fedearl ministers Sheikh Rashid Ahmed, Liaquat Jatoi, Awais Leghari and Sher Afgan.

Talking to Dawn, a ruling party MNA from Southern Punjab said he had refused to leave the House considering it an "insult". He said the government should have trust in its members.

Another ruling party MNA from the Seraiki belt severely criticized the government's move and said the opposition was right in claiming that the government did not have trust in its members. He was of the view that due to this "wrong strategy", the opposition remained "victorious".

He further said most of the opposition's charges against the speaker were correct. "No doubt that every speaker bails out the government from difficult situations, but the present speaker had embarrassed the government several times," he added.

The ruling party MNA also said the speaker should have "moral courage" to resign from the office as he was the only speaker, perhaps in the world, against whom the no-confidence motion had been tabled twice. He criticized both the speaker and the deputy speaker for "their failure to conduct the House smoothly and in accordance with the rules."

In reply to a question, the MNA, however ruled out the possibility that there was any revolt in the ruling coalition against Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz or President Gen Pervez Musharraf.

He said if the treasury members were to abstain from the voting, then there was no logic in stopping them from sitting in the House. When asked as to who devised this strategy, he said it was the proposal of Parliamentary Affairs Minister Dr Sher Afgan.