October 29, 2008	Wednesday	Shawwal 29, 1429

ISLAMABAD, Oct 28: The Pakistan Muslim League-Q offered in the Senate on Tuesday to help the government undo the controversial presidential powers to dissolve the National Assembly, but said President Asif Ali Zardari seemed to have a change of mind.

PML-Q parliamentary leader in the Senate Wasim Sajjad said his formerly ruling party, the largest single 40-strong group in the 100-seat upper house, would vote for it if the PPP-led coalition government brought a bill in parliament to amend the Constitution to repeal the controversial article 58(2)b inserted by decree by former military president Pervez Musharraf.

In what looked like a challenge to test the sincerity of the PPP leadership about its pledges on the second day of a Senate debate on Mr Zadari’s Sept 20 address to a joint sitting of parliament, Mr Sajjad asked the government to bring the bill now without waiting until March, when half of the Senate will be up for re-election mainly by the four provincial assemblies that the ruling coalition hopes will give it a necessary two-thirds majority to amend the Constitution.

“We are ready to support you,” the PML-Q leader said without evoking an immediate response from the poorly-attended treasury benches, which had to listen to more criticism than praise for the president in less than two months after his election, mainly for his broken or unfulfilled promises, especially about a promised restoration of superior court judges sacked by then general Musharraf under a controversial Nov 3, 2007, emergency proclamation.

But the strongest criticism of the president came from Jamaat-i-Islami Naib Amir Prof Khurshid Ahmed as the leader of the Independent Group of Opposition, who cited several disappointments from Mr Zardari and perceived failures of the present government to fulfil its pledges, including those about the restoration of the pre-Nov 3 judiciary and deposed Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry and undoing the 17th Amendment of the Constitution that legitimised the Musharraf decrees.

In the two days of the debate, nobody from the treasury benches has replied to criticism to the highly emotive issue of the judiciary, despite a strong defence of the government by leader of house Raza Rabbani on Monday and some clarifications on Tuesday about the government’s response to the US drone attacks on Pakistani tribal areas to target suspected militant hideouts.

Law and Parliamentary Affairs Minister Farooq H. Naek came in and went out of the house at times but did not take the floor as lawyers voted across the country to elect an iconic judicial activist, Ali Ahmed Kurd, as the new president of the Supreme Court Bar Association, in a political blow to government moves to divide the judicial community over the judges’ issue.

Some PML-Q figures had in the past promised in their individual capacity to vote for a repeal of 58(2)b but Tuesday’s was the first time Mr Sajjad gave the assurance on behalf of the party of former Musharraf loyalists.

But Mr Sajjad doubted Mr Zardari’s sincerity to go ahead with what his Pakistan People’s Party and its allies had pledged to do in their election manifestos and the famous Charter of Democracy signed by assassinated PPP leader Benazir Bhutto and PML-N chief Nawaz Sharif in 2006.

The PML-Q leader said he had expected a clear statement from the president to ask parliament to repeal 58(2)b, which empowers the president to dissolve the National Assembly and sack a prime minister at his discretion, but his ambiguous call only to ‘revisit’ that particular clause the 17th Amendment “indicates a change of thinking”.

Prof Khurshid regretted that an all-parties parliamentary committee proposed by Mr Zardari to ‘revisit’ the deformed articles of the Constitution had not been formed yet and said it seemed the new president was trying to use the authority arrogated by his predecessor by constitutional deviations.

He also took the government to task over the prevailing economic crisis and the law and order situation and, while referring to military operations in the tribal areas and some adjoining areas of the NWFP and in Balochistan, accused both the president and Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani of following General Musharraf’s policies.

Muttahida Qaumi Movement’s Babar Khan Ghuari, who mainly spoke about the prevailing economic crisis and power shortages, called for a reduction in bank interest rates for a revival of industry and the stock market and warned that higher power rates, if not scrapped, could lead to a civil disobedience.

Pakhtunkhwa Milli Awami Party’s veteran parliamentarian Abdul Rahim Mandokhel complained of a lack any share of Pashtun population of Balochistan in decision-making before calling for a rectification of what he called a ‘wrong’ done through moves he said amounted to liquidation rather than safeguarding judicial independence.

The Senate will resume its session at 4pm on Wednesday to hear Prime Minister’s Adviser on Finance Shaukat Tarin about how the government plans to tackle the present economic crisis.