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ISLAMABAD, Nov 10: Speaker Amir Hussain Chaudhry on Friday blocked a prayer in the National Assembly for 124 civilians and troops recently killed by a missile strike and a suicide bomber in the north of the country, provoking an opposition protest and a threat to obstruct future proceedings.
The opening of the last session of the Assembly's fourth parliamentary year lasted less than 10 minutes before the chair adjourned the house until Monday to mourn recent deaths of former president Ghulam Ishaq Khan and a sitting member and a former member of the house as tensions seemed mounting also on a controversial women's right bill due to be taken up next week.
The opposition Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal (MMA) alliance said it had planned a Fateha prayer in the house also for 82 people killed on Oct 30 in a missile strike on a madressah in Bajaur and 42 army recruits killed in Wednesday's suicide-bomb attack on an army parade ground at Dargai.
But the Speaker said at the start of the poorly attended evening sitting no proceedings would be held for the day except Fateha khawani for the former president, MMA member from Karachi Abdus Sattar Afghani and former member Mir Darya Khan Khoso.
"No Fateha khawani will be held for anybody else," Mr Hussain said, disallowing MMA member Hafiz Hussain Ahmed to speak on a point of order and himself lead the brief prayer -- instead of the usual practice of asking a religious member to do it -- before adjourning the house until 5pm on Monday.
"Aap ziadati kar rahay hain" (you are doing high-handedness), the MMA member shouted as the Speaker hurriedly went out of the house.
Hafiz Ahmed told reporters later he wondered whose "fear" had prevented the Speaker from allowing a Fateha khawani for "innocent people" killed in Bajaur and Dargai and complained that MMA members were not permitted to say even a few words about their alliance member from Karachi, Mr Afghani, or for former president Ishaq Khan.
He said the MMA would protest on Monday against what he called a "black chapter" in Pakistan's parliamentary history and, in an apparent threat of protests inside the house, added: "Let us see how the Speaker runs the house."
Heated arguments are likely during a meeting of the house business advisory committee of ruling coalition and opposition members convened by the Speaker on Monday to discuss what an official statement described as "the agenda and other matters related to the business of the current session", which is likely to continue for 10 days and also begin the fifth and last Šparliamentary year of the Assembly beginning on Nov 16.
Both the main opposition groupings of the Alliance for the Restoration of Democracy (ARD) and MMA have filed adjournment motions seeking debates on several issues, including the Bajaur and Dargai killings and President Pervez Musharraf's recently published memoirs "In the Line of Fire". An ARD adjournment notion on Dargai killings was filed on Friday.
MMA member Hussain Ahmed also threatened protests against the Protection of Women (Criminal Laws Amendment) Bill and voiced doubts if the present session of the National Assembly would be able to pass the law, which seeks to protect women from the widely complained misuse of the controversial Islamic Hudood ordinances about zina (adultery and rape) and qazf (false allegation of zina) enforced in 1979 by Gen Mohammad Zia-ul-Haq.
WEDNESDAY FOR WOMEN'S BILL: The bill was on the agenda for Friday's sitting but Parliamentary Affairs Minister Sher Afgan Khan Niazi said the draft approved by a house select committee would be taken up on Wednesday and likely be passed on Friday with one likely amendment to be introduced by the government rather than any proposed by clerics.
The opposition is likely to press for an immediate debate on the Bajaur and Dargai incidents on Monday while Mr Niazi told reporters that the Protection of Women's... Bill would wait until Wednesday for the return of Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz from his current visit to the United States to attend a meeting of the UN reforms panel.
The bill was listed fourth in the government's legislative agenda distributed on Friday, but Mr Niazi said he would move it to the top of the agenda on Wednesday and "God-willing it will be passed on Friday".
Asked if the government planned to move any amendment in the select committee's draft, he said: "There could be one" prescribing five years' imprisonment for "bey hayai" (lewedness) to incorporate a provision dropped from the original bill.
"This amendment will not be of much consequence," he said, but parried a reporter's question about the fate of recommendations of agreement signed by Pakistan Muslim League president Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain and Punjab Chief Minister Chaudhry Pervez Elahi with some religious scholars in September.
"Ask Chaudhry Sahib about it," he told the questioner about the agreement, one of whose three recommendations was for prescribing up to five years' imprisonment for "lewedness" or wilful sex out of wedlock.
The other two recommendations called for making the offence of "zina-bil-jabr" (rape) -- that the bill took out of the 1979 ordinance and incorporated in the Pakistan Penal Code -- subject to the Islamic Hadd punishment of stoning to death for adultery Šif it fulfilled the requirements of evidence for such a Hadd, and for Islamic injunctions laid down in the Holy Quran and Sunnah to prevail over any other law in interpreting the ordinance.
The MMA has threatened all its 65 members of the National Assembly will resign and the alliance will also withdraw from the PML-led coalition government in Balochistan province.
But the PPP, which was present in the select committee and supports its draft, as well as the ruling coalition partner Muttahida Qaumi Movement have said they will review their positions in case of any deviations from that draft.
