ISLAMABAD, Nov 13: The government told the National Assembly on Thursday it would adhere to assassinated leader Benazir Bhutto’s democratic agenda in a vociferous response to an opposition charge of deviation, but evaded major irritants such as autocratic presidential powers and broken promises to reinstate all deposed judges.

On the second day of a debate on President Asif Ali Zardari’s address to a joint sitting of the two houses of parliament in September, new Parliamentary Affairs Minister Senator Babar Awan drew repeated cheers from the treasury benches as he replied to strong opening speech on Wednesday by opposition leader Nisar Ali Khan.

One charge levelled by the opposition leader was that the president and the coalition government led by his Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) had deviated from the declared ideals of the party founded Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, such as those contained in a Charter of Democracy (CoD) she signed with Pakistan Muslim League-N (PML-N) leader Nawaz Sharif in 2006.

Mr Awan rejected the charge, saying that for five years of its term, this government “will continue to act upon Bibi’s (Benazir’s) agenda”, which — in a reference to her Dec 27, 2007 assassination in a gun-and-bomb attack in Rawalpindi — he described as “a flame mixed with her blood”.

While referring to full or partial implementation of some of the provisions of the 36-point CoD such as giving chairmanship of the key Public Accounts Committee to the opposition and disclosure of the main heads of defence budget to parliament, he said the government was ready to constitute a federal constitutional court as proposed by the document through a proposed constitutional amendment package.

But he did not say when the package would be brought to parliament, where it will need a two-thirds majority in both the 342-seat National Assembly and the 100-seat Senate to be passed.

The minister also made no mention of the objectionable Seventeenth Constitutional Amendment of 2003 that legitimised sweeping powers assumed by then military president Pervez Musharraf and whose repeal is one of the amendments sought by the CoD to restore the constitution to its position before he replaced it with a Provisional Constitution Order (PCO) on seizing power in an Oct 12, 1999, coup.

In his Sept 20 address, the president had proposed that an all-parties committee of parliament “revisit” the 17th Amendment, which includes the constitutional provisions which empowered the presidency to the dissolve the National Assembly and sack a prime minister and transferred to it the usually prime ministerial powers to appoint armed forces chiefs, provincial governors and the Chief Election Commissioner.

Mr Awan said the government, while seeking to institutionalise democracy, was prepared to establish a National Democracy Commission as proposed by the CoD for promoting and developing democratic traditions and sought opposition cooperation for the purpose.

However, he said the government was unable at present to form a commission, as envisaged by the CoD, to recommend appointment of judges of the Supreme Court and the provincial high courts because there were no judges in the superior judiciary now who had not taken oath at one time or another under a PCO to qualify for its membership.

He said strengthening the institution of judiciary was necessary for its independence while “individuals come and go”, but sidestepped the opposition demand that all judges sacked by former president Musharraf be reinstated as committed by Mr Zardari in joint declarations with Mr Sharif.

It was the disregard of that those commitment which became the major cause of the PML-N’s withdrawal from the PPP-led coalition in May.

Mr Awan dismissed the opposition demand that Mr Zardari give up the office of PPP co-chairman in following a tradition of parliamentary democracy, saying there was no such requirement in the constitution, and recalled that Quad-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah continued as president of the Muslim League after becoming Pakistan’s governor-general on independence in 1947.

He also rejected the idea that Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani’s office had become powerless while decisions were made by the president, but sighted only the prime minister’s practice of occasionally replying to questions when he is present in the assembly, although a promise to introduce a prime minister’s question hour remains unfulfilled.

About the opposition criticism of the formation of a 55-member cabinet while the country faced an economic crisis, he said there would be little extra burden on the exchequer by inducing a member of parliament as a minister.

About the reported recent trip of more than 200 people with President Zardari to Saudi Arabia, to which Mr Nisar had referred, Mr Awan said only 172 passengers had joined the trip and “not a single penny was spent (on them from the national exchequer”. He was echoing a statement by the prime minister that the president had personally paid for the junket.

About frequent opposition criticism of Pakistan’s role in the war on terror, he said the present government was seeking “a way out of this war” which it did not start and would ensure implementation of a unanimous resolution passed by an in-camera session of the two houses of parliament last month.

The debate will continue on Friday when the house will meet at 10am.