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| September 16, 2005 | Friday | Sha'aban 11, 1426 |
Opposition rejects Sajjad’s argument
ISLAMABAD Sept 15: The combined opposition in the Senate continued its boycott on Thursday and challenged the position taken by the treasury on the legality of the ongoing session being chaired by a presiding officer nominated by Muhammedmian Soomro before the session began.
Speaking at a news conference in the parliament house cafeteria after staging a walkout from the session, leader of opposition Mian Raza Rabbani accused the government of deliberately creating a situation in which the opposition was unable to raise important public issues on the floor of the house until General Musharraf returned from his visit to the United States.
He said the opposition wanted to raise the issues of oil price increase, rigging in the local body elections, foreign policy developments and matters relating to human rights, which the ministers could not defend.
Prof Khurshid Ahmed of the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal, Ishaq Dar of the Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) and Raza Mohammad Raza of the Pushtunkhwah Milli Awami Party were present on the occasion.
Mr Rabbani said the government was left with no moral or political legs to stand on after the international media exposed its involvement in using state machinery to rig the polls and it should have resigned.
He declared that the combined opposition was determined to raise its voice through the press outside the upper house and would take on the government as soon as the chairman Senate returned to the house and started ‘legal’ sitting.
If the government, he said, had chosen the path of war with the opposition, the combined opposition would not go back from its position and would continue protest on floor of the house and outside it.
Referring to Wasim Sajjad’s explanation of the issue of nomination of panel of chairmen to run the house in the absence of its chairman and deputy chairman, he said: “We have already clarified that we do not challenge the chairman’s powers of nominating the panel but we object to his doing so before the commencement of house business.
He referred to article 14(1) in support of his argument which clearly says that the chairman will announce panel of chairmen when house will (actually) commence its session. Section (2) of the said article says ‘session means the period from commencement to prorogation’.
Mr Rabbani claimed that the opposition’s attitude remained reconciliatory ever since the issue was raised and it had offered the treasury to negotiate on a way out to make the session legal but the offer was not accepted as ‘hawks’ in the government did not like it.
Earlier, leader of the house Wasim Sajjad argued that the acting president in the absence of the president from the country or in case of his illness could even preside over the session, leave alone nominating the panel of three presiding officers in the absence of the chairman and deputy chairman.
Speaking at a news conference, Mr Sajjad said while an acting president in case of resignation by incumbent president took over as acting president under article 49(1), under 49(2) he could even preside over the session after taking over as acting president in event of incumbent president’s absence from the country.
Answering a question, he said although the acting president could chair the ongoing Senate session, he did not do so according to parliamentary traditions.
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