November 05, 2006	Sunday	Shawwal 12, 1427

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ISLAMABAD, Nov 4: President Pervez Musharraf on Saturday called the National Assembly to meet on Friday for what could be a turbulent session to begin the lower house’s last parliamentary year, with a stalled women’s rights bill being the main item on the agenda.

More than a dozen other bills are also reported to be on the legislative schedule of the session, which the opposition parties are planning to use to air anger on matters ranging from the president’s recently published memoirs to the Oct 30 missile strike on a madressah in the Bajaur tribal area that killed more than 80 people.

The session, due to begin at 5pm on Friday and likely to continue for 10 days, will complete the National Assembly’s fourth parliamentary year and begin the fifth and last of its tenure beginning on November 16.

But no business is likely to be transacted on the opening day of the session as the house must, as matter of tradition, adjourn for the day to mourn the death of a member from Karachi, Abdus Sattar Afghani of the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal. If the house has its usual two-day weekend on Saturday and Sunday, the legislative and other issues will be taken up only on Nov 13.

The controversial Protection of Women (Criminal Laws Amendment) Bill, which could not be passed in the last session of the lower house mainly because of an MMA threat to resign from the house, is likely to top the government’s legislative agenda.

But Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs Kamil Ali Agha said he was not sure on what date the house would take up the bill, which seeks to protect women from the widely complained misuse of the controversial Hudood ordinances regarding zina (adultery and rape) and qazf (false accusation of zina) enforced in 1,979 by then military ruler Gen Ziaul Haq.

However, Mr Agha told Dawn it would be same bill on the agenda as presented in the last session of the house after approval, with some amendments by a select committee that was boycotted by the MMA but included the People’s Party Parliamentarians.