ISLAMABAD: The government seemed trying to paper over its problems with the military as one minister dismissed them with an unusual abandon in the National Assembly on Monday.

Apparent differences within the opposition helped the ruling PML-N overcome protests and some fireworks as it took upon itself to offer a debate on law and order, pre-empting different adjournment motions of opposition lawmakers seeking separate discussion on issues including the government-military relationship.

And the move brought Minister for States and Frontier Regions retired Lt Gen Abdul Qadir Baloch to declare that democracy faced “no danger” from the army or its present chief. “The army’s command at present is in the hands of the most professional, competent and non-political chief, (and) democracy has no danger from him,” the minister said in his Urdu remarks.

Nobody had yet talked in the house of any threat to Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s 11-month-old government from the military, and the minister’s response to a couple of rather muted opposition speeches raised questions of whether he should have talked at this forum in such a carefree manner.

In an obvious reference to joint protest marches plan­ned by opposition Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) and Pakistan Awami Tehrik of Allama Tahirul Qadri on Sunday on first anniversary of the May 11, 2013 general elections to protest against alleged rigging of that vote, Mr Baloch further said: “The army will never become a party to wrapping up democracy … and will not play with the will of the people.”

While Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan, the most senior member of the prime minister’s cabinet, left the house before the start of the debate on law and order, and Defence Minister Khwaja Asif too was not present to speak about affairs concerning the military, it fell to the lot of a rather lower-profile Mr Baloch to speak on one of the most important issues agitating the minds of people just as the government is about to complete its first year in office.

An obvious attempt by Chaudhry Nisar to avoid speaking on the subject raised doubts whether Mr Baloch’s choice of words would find favour with higher echelons of the ruling party.

Initial opposition protests against the government’s move to sideline their adjournment motions proved short-lived after the main opposition PPP did not press the issue much, leaving only the second-biggest PTI and Awami Muslim League chief Sheikh Rashid Ahmed to agitate the issue.

Sheikh Rashid provoked some rival shouting from the ruling party after he accused the government of “wanting to deceive the nation” and demanded that the house pass a resolution expressing solidarity with an “important” national security institution.

This was a reference to the Inter-Services Intelligence as response to a perceived humiliation of the country’s top intelligence agency by a private television channel by blaming on it a mysterious April 19 shooting that wounded a channel talk show host, Hamid Mir, while driving on a Karachi road.

The PTI and many other critics accuse the government of taking sides against the ISI in the affair, which led to speculation of a further stra­ining of the government-military relationship that started with an apparently humiliating indictment of former president retired Gen Pervez Musharraf for high treason.

But Mr Baloch, while assuring the house that the government would bring the Karachi attackers to justice, used quite strong words as he denounced the television channel for its coverage showing the ISI in bad light and for what he called sowing of misgivings about the Musharraf trial.

Earlier, the Muttahida Qaumi Movement walked out of the house and did not return for the remainder of the sitting after one of its members, Abdul Rashid Godil, while speaking in the debate, protested against the alleged targeting of his party workers in the ongoing anti-crime crackdown in Karachi.