ISLAMABAD, April 17: After weeks of hesitations, President Pervez Musharraf on Tuesday called the National Assembly to meet on April 23 for what is billed to be an explosive session due to an expected focus on a raging judicial crisis and a dubious advent of Talibanisation in Islamabad.
The session, beginning at 5pm on Monday after an unusually long recess of about two months, will be second of the lower house’s last parliamentary year ending in November.
A beleaguered government is likely to have hard time defending its controversial roles in the two issues after failing to defuse either the nationwide protests over the presidential reference against Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry or the virtual revolt against state authority announced by hard-line clerics from a key Islamabad mosque.
Both the main opposition groupings of the Alliance for Restoration of Democracy and the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal have sent notice for adjournment motions seeking debates on events relating to the presidential reference against Justice Chaudhry over the disputed charge of misconduct to be inquired by a five-judge Supreme Judicial Council and his suspension.
No formal request had yet been made by any party for a debate on the defiance of state authority in the heart of Islamabad by militant madressah students controlled by Islamabad’s rebellious Lal Masjid and their moves to enforce their brand of Islamic morality in their neighbourhoods.
But parliamentary sources said that while the ARD might not take an initiative, the issue was certain to be raised most probably by members of the ruling coalition or the MMA, which appears divided over the affair with alliance secretary-general and opposition leader Maulana Fazlur Rehman seeing a role of unspecified intelligence agencies to discredit the religious parties and alliance president Qazi Hussain Ahmed apparently having a soft corner for the militants.
Notice for adjournment and other motions have been moved by the opposition alliances for discussion also on several other issues ranging from increases in electricity and gas rates to the anti-militant operations in North and South Waziristan tribal areas and the European Union ban on flights by some PIA planes over maintenance concerns.
The government is likely to try to block debates over the judicial crisis on the plea that the matter is sub judice because of its pendency before the SJC, whose next hearing is due on Wednesday.
But ARD parliamentary secretary Izhar Amrohvi said the opposition would overcome such objections by seeking debates on actions like alleged manhandling of the chief justice last month while he was coming to the Supreme Court for the first of his four appearances before the SJC so far, police attacks on lawyers and journalists and detention of political workers, rather than the presidential reference itself.
The government has appeared to have dithered from the start of the open defiance by the government-owned Lal Masjid after its Jamia Hafsa madressah occupied a nearby Children’s Library of the Education Ministry in January to their abduction of three women accused of immoral activities and two policemen in March with impunity and occasional raids on music shops and burning of seized video cassettes and compact discs.
Nothing concrete has emerged even after Pakistan Muslim League chief Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain engaged in talks with the Lal Masjid clerics after cutting short a medical treatment trip to the United States.
But critics have voiced fears that some hidden hands of the establishment could be encouraging the madressah militants who now seem to be extending their activities to areas outside Islamabad.
“It seems an attempt is being made to bequeath a troublesome problem for the future government,” Zia Khokhar, a political analyst said. “How those who could eliminate (former Balochistan governor and chief minister) Akbar Bugti on the plea to establish the government’s writ and topple and hand-cuff a prime minister like Nawaz Sharif with two-thirds majority in parliament were unable to act against two brothers... controlling the Lal Masjid?” he asked.
