ISLAMABAD: The PPP, the largest opposition party in parliament with a decisive position in the Senate, announced in the National Assembly on Thursday its opposition to amending the constitution to create military courts to try terrorism suspects, saying the job be done, instead, by amending only the Army Act.

And as focus seemed shifting for a while to developments outside, opposition leader Khursheed Ahmed Shah also told the lower house that the PPP would no more participate in a debate on a Dec 16 devastating terrorist attack on a Peshawar public school unless Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali attended, after his party as well as the MQM staged separate token walkouts to protest at the levy of an additional 5 per cent general sales tax on petroleum products.

Both the opposition and some government allies accused the PML-N and federal ministers of being non-serious at the start of the house session on the New Year’s Day after the government initiated, amid some confusion, the debate on the suicide attack on Peshawar’s Army Public School that killed 149 students and staff members.

Mr Khursheed Shah gave the PPP position on military courts while opening the debate on the Peshawar attack, saying: “If you want to constitute military courts, then constitute them to punish terrorists and those who support them.”

But he said this should be done by amending the Army Act, warning that “if we amend the constitution, it will open a door to make politicians feel unsafe.”

Mr Shah called for an adjournment of the house for the day after a break for Maghrib prayers when the chamber presented a much bleaker look and said that at least the PPP would no longer participate in the debate if the interior minister, who has rarely attended house proceedings over the past several months, did not turn up for a briefing.

His demand was supported also by some other opposition members as well as the government-allied Pakhtunkhwa Milli Awami Party’s chief Mahmood Khan Acha­kzai and Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs Sheikh Aftab Ahmed.

But Speaker Ayaz Sadiq ordered the debate to proceed, citing heavy costs of calling a session, and after a spirited stand taken against the critics by Defence Production Minister Rana Tanveer Hussain, though half a dozen other speakers, mostly from the PML-N and its allies, preferred avoiding clear positions on whether to amend the constitution or only the Army Act to set up military courts.

Earlier, at the start of the session, both Mr Shah and Abdul Rashid Godail of the MQM called the imposition of the additional 5pc GST on petroleum products as an illegal alteration in the budget for fiscal 2014-15 and demanded its revocation.

Published in Dawn, January 2nd, 2015