ISLAMABAD, April 14: In an apparent rethink of their plans, lawmakers of the opposition PML-N resorted to shouts and a walkout in the National Assembly on Thursday in protest over a number of problems they blamed on the government, which got more brickbats than bouquets during a debate on its policies.

The PML-N move came as a negation of what had looked like a success of a courteous government approach on the previous day to avoid threatened protests by the country’s main opposition party at the start of a new parliamentary year.

No walkout, or the first of a series a protests threatened by opposition leader Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan, happened on Wednesday after Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani and Information Minister Firdous Ashiq Awan responded to most of the complaints voiced by the PML-N politician in a speech on Monday, ranging from US drone attacks in Fata and the release of a US spy agency operative accused of double murder to disputed allegations of the government targeting a sports television channel due to criticism by a media group owning it.

The proceedings remained normal in the early part of the inconclusive debate on Monday, which was marked by a scathing criticism by former interior minister and PPP-S faction leader Aftab Ahmed Khan Sherpao of the law and order situation in his home province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, where he said militants were increasing their writ around Peshawar.

But things turned sour towards the fag end of the fourth day of the lower house’s spring session when PML-N members resorted to chanting protest slogans and desk-thumping during the speech of their only party colleague from Balochistan, Lt-Gen (retd) Abdul Qadir Baloch, ignoring objections from Acting Speaker Faisal Karim Kundi.

And then, after Chaudhry Nisar had left the house, a PML-N hawk from Lahore, Khwaja Saad Rafiq, apparently took charge of his parliamentary party and interrupted the debate to repeat almost all the contentious points raised by the opposition leader in his Monday’s speech and accused the government of failing to give a “solid and effective reply” before leading his party members out of the house.

The walkout, which was not joined by any other opposition party, appeared to have come as a shock to the ruling coalition after Wednesday’s peace moves, as neither the chair made the usual gesture of asking a government minister to try to bring the protesters back to the house nor the treasury benches did it on their own before the house was adjourned until 10am on Friday, after two more speeches in the debate over President Asif Ali Zardari’s March 22 address to a joint sitting of both houses of parliament.

Mr Rafiq protested over the US drone attacks against suspected militant hideouts mainly in Fata’s South Waziristan and North Waziristan administrative agencies, the so-called target-killings in Karachi and Balochistan, alleged restrictions on the Geo Super sports channel and last month’s release of US operative Raymond Davis following the payment of blood money to the heirs of the deceased before calling for a “concrete and effective reply” from the government.

An appeal by a member of the ruling PPP from Peshawar, Noor Alam, failed to stop the PML-N to find a reply in his speech, which noted Mr Davis was released by a sessions judge of the PML-N-ruled Punjab at a time when “both (Sharif) brothers stayed in London”, described PML-N’s concern about drone attacks, which he said killed only Pakhtuns, as an eyewash by those “who actually sit in America’s lap”, and called allegations about penalising a television channel a “drama which must stop”.

Mr Sherpao, whose was the main speech of the day, blamed both the federal and provincial governments for what he saw as lack of rehabilitation and reconstruction work necessitated by damage done by militancy and floods in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and called for early implementation of promised reforms in Fata that he said were lying pending with the president, including the extension of Political Parties Act there.

He also demanded the formation of a federal task force to help revive an estimated 1,200 closed industrial units in the province, creation of a revolving fund for the reconstruction of schools destroyed by militants and utilising oil and gas potential of the province and Fata, which he said would be more than meeting the whole country’s demand.