May 25, 2008	Sunday	Jamadi-ul-Awwal 19, 1429

LAHORE, May 24: Almost all the parties not represented in parliament have rejected the proposed constitutional package unveiled by PPP co-chairman Asif Ali Zardari in Islamabad on Saturday, while the PML-N refuses to comment before going through the draft of the package.

PML-N leaders Nawaz Sharif says he cannot comment on the proposed 18th amendment without thoroughly studying it. The package, he says, has yet to be handed over to the party.

Party chairman Raja Zafarul Haq, however, laments that the PPP has violated the Murree Declaration by not adopting the modality accepted in it for reinstatement of the deposed judges.

About fixing the tenure for the office of the chief justice of Pakistan, he says it is Justice Iftikhar-specific and tantamount to deposing him through another method.

JUI-F: The president of his own faction of the Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam, Maulana Fazlur Rehman says he is not yet in the knowledge of all suggestions included in the proposed 18th constitutional amendment. However, he sees no harm in setting a tenure for the office of the CJP through parliament which is competent to do so.

About the proposal of changing the name of the NWFP as Pakhtoonkhwah, an outstanding demand of the Awami National Party, he says his party too has been demanding it.

The JUI-F is a partner in the federal government.

JI: Rejecting the package, Jamaat-i-Islami leader Liaquat Baloch says it seems that Washington has prepared the constitutional package and handed it over to the PPP through the presidency.

He said any package giving legal cover to the emergency-plus and the post-emergency judiciary would be unacceptable to the people. He hoped that the PML-N too would reject it and would not support the PPP government in the coming budget session.

Saying he did not see reinstatement of the judges through the package, he added that it would also be discussed threadbare at the national conference of the All-Parties Democratic Movement (APDM).

ANP: Awami National Party President Asfandyar Wali says he agrees to all the provisions of the proposed package, especially the suggestion of renaming the NWFP as Pakhtoonkhwah.

PTI: Pakistan Tehrik-i-Insaaf chairman Imran Khan regrets that the PPP has tried to defuse the issue of reinstatement of judges by raising certain other issues in the package.

Alleging that the PPP is compromising its mandate by continuing Musharraf’s policies, he says the party is giving constitutional cover to the presidential election and the National Reconciliation Ordinance (NRO) through the package.

“Every murderer and plunderer (of national wealth) is afraid of Justice Chaudhry and an independent judiciary.”

LPP: The Labour Party Pakistan has rejected the package, saying its main purpose seems to be removing (deposed) chief justice Iftikhar Chaudhry from his office.

A spokesman for the party said though the LPP agreed to many suggestions in the package, it rejected the document as a whole.