August 28, 2008	Thursday	Sha'aban 25, 1429

ISLAMABAD, Aug 27: The government cut short the National Assembly session on Wednesday after hopes for the restoration of all deposed judges any time soon were dashed as a depleted ruling coalition seemed taking a hard line against lawyers’ protests that poses little threat to its presidential hopes.

The session, which began on Aug 11, was originally due to last until Aug 29 with a promise by main coalition partners to have a resolution passed by the lower house as a political force behind an executive order to reinstate the judges.

Though the five-month-old coalition broke up on Monday when the PML-N walked out of it over backtracking by the coalition-leading PPP, hopes continued that the government might still come up with a plan during the current session for a phased reinstatement of the affected justices.

But the prorogation of the house by a presidential order came two days early just after a cabinet meeting and on the eve of planned lawyers’ sit-ins across the country on Friday designed to block transport.

The move smacked of a hard line by the coalition, which seemed to be losing patience with protesting lawyers whose leaders accuse the government of seeking to break up their movement and divide the deposed judiciary by offering to reinstate some of the judges at its terms, as happened with the swearing-in of eight of them in the Sindh High Court earlier in the day, and keep others waiting.

Law and Parliamentary Affairs Minister Farooq H. Naek, accused by critics of trying to complicate the matter by opposing the judges’ restoration by only an executive order without the backing of a constitutional amendment, made no statement on the issue in either the National Assembly or the Senate though he invited protest leaders in a long televised talk with reporters for talks to avoid what he said could become a constitutional crisis.

Besides bad feelings over the unresolved judicial controversy, the concluding sitting of the 17-day session was marked by some dire warnings to the government from its independent allies from Fata about the ongoing military operations there and from the expected new allies from MQM about miseries caused by power cuts.