September 25, 2007	Tuesday	Ramazan 12, 1428

ISLAMABAD, Sept 24: All the opposition parties, with some ifs and buts, are agreed to resign from the National Assembly to block Gen Pervez Musharraf’s re-election as president but none is willing to quit the Senate.

That looks intriguing to political analysts who say if the opposition is serious in making life difficult for President Musharraf it should quit the Senate which is a vital part of the president’s electoral college.

Resignations in the national and provincial assemblies would not create a crisis for President Musharraf but resignations in the Senate would - by creating a political vacuum by rendering the Senate, a permanent constitutional body, incomplete.

It would be completed only after newly elected national and provincial assemblies elect the replacements for the resigning Senators.

Both sides across the political divide have reasons to offer for resigning from the national and provincial assemblies but not from the Senate.

Critics of the opposition’s resignation strategy say that the anti-Musharraf parties know that the life of the assemblies ends in two months but the term of half of the members of the Senate expires after two years and that of the other half after five years.

Opposition members can stir a serious constitutional crisis by deciding to resign from the Senate as the government will not be able to fill the vacant seats due to the dissolution of the provincial assemblies which are the electoral college for the Senate.

Interestingly, the People’s Party Parliamentarians (PPP), which has not so far announced whether it would resign from the assemblies or not, says that its members are even ready to quit the Senate “if need be”.

On the other hand, the parties in the All Parties Democratic Movement (APDM), which had announced their decision of quitting the assemblies on September 29 are not ready even to consider the option of resigning from the Senate.

“Why should we give up our gains in the Senate which we achieve after the 2002 elections?” said Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal (MMA) MNA Hafiz Hussain Ahmed and Information Secretary of the Pakistan Muslim League-N (PML-N) Ahsan Iqbal.

Talking to Dawn Mr Iqbal said nobody knew what results the next general elections produce. As far as the PML-N was concerned, it was ready to quit the Senate. However, he was of the view that the MMA, which had gained unexpected results in the last elections in the provinces of the NWFP and Balochistan, would perhaps not be willing to do so.

MMA’s Hafiz Hussain Ahmed said the religious alliance was not leaving the Senate as it also had an eye on the future. “If the next parliament and assemblies decide to impeach the sitting president, our senators can play an important role”, he said.

Opposition Leader in the Senate Mian Raza Rabbani, when contacted, opposed the idea of resigning from the Senate.

The PPP stalwart said the opposition believed that there should be at least one forum where they could raise their issues after dissolution of the assemblies. He said there was a “broad understanding” among the opposition parties that at least one constitutional body should be kept intact for any future development.

He, however, said that his party members would not be hesitant in resigning from the Senate, “if they are asked to do so by the party leadership”.