ISLAMABAD, Feb 28: Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani offered an olive branch to a protesting opposition in the National Assembly on Friday, promising efforts to resolve the political crisis in Punjab, but sidestepped opposition leader Nisar Ali Khan’s demand to restore “Pakistan’s real judiciary”.

After a hard-hitting tirade by the

opposition leader mainly targeting President Asif Ali Zardari amid slogan-chanting by Pakistan Muslim League-N members, a sombre-looking prime minister assured an

urgently summoned lower house that there would be no horse-trading to deprive the PML-N, as the largest party in the Punjab assembly, of a chance to form a new provincial government in place of one dissolved as a result of a Supreme Court ruling.

“There is no need for horse-trading,” he said while referring to an opposition charge that the president imposed the direct federal rule, or governor’s rule, in the province after the ruling by a three-judge bench on Wednesday so his Pakistan People’s Party could buy loyalties of provincial legislators to form its own government, rather than let the PML-N immediately elect a new chief minister.

“If we could not make a majority, we will sit in the opposition,” Mr Gilani said about the role of the PPP, some of whose leaders have said their party, which was a junior partner in the previous ruling coalition led by the PML-N, will now form its own provincial government with the help of smaller groups.

The PML-N also alleges that in order to capture the Punjab government, Mr Zardari engineered the court ruling that disqualified former prime minister Nawaz Sharif and Punjab chief minister Shahbaz Sharif from holding an elective public office on grounds of their controversial convictions under former military ruler General Pervez Musharraf. The government rejects the charge.

Restive PML-N members punctuated Chaudhry Nisar’s mostly searing, but occasionally conciliatory speech, with repeated slogan-chanting that once led to a scuffle between some PPP and PML-N members that was cut short by the intervention of senior members from both sides.

Otherwise PPP members refrained from reacting to the PML-N slogan-chanting in accordance with a directive from the prime minister in their parliamentary party meeting.

Mr Gilani didn’t say much to defend the resort to governor’s rule except that it was a party decision that “everybody” in the party had to follow and appeared to be acknowledging that something wrong had happened.

However, after reaffirming what he called his belief in the assassinated PPP leader Benazir Bhutto’s concept of political reconciliation in the country, he said: “There is no wrong without a remedy, and God-willing we will try to find a solution to this (situation).”

He said that since the provincial assembly had not been suspended, it could meet in a requisitioned session and, despite a two-month period set for the governor’s ruler, Governor Salman Taseer could call a session “even tomorrow” to ascertain who should be the new chief minister.

Chaudhry Nisar singled out President Zardari for spoiling reconciliation between once bitter rivals and the country’s two main parties mainly by breaking pledges to restore all superior court judges sacked by former president Pervez Musharraf under a controversial Nov 3, 2007, emergency proclamation and now by seeking a PPP capture of the Punjab government.

He was so bitter about Mr Zardari’s role that he would not call him president in his speech because he said the PPP co-chairman was not behaving as a president by using the President House for holding PPP meetings as its co-chairman.

But he said that despite the present bitterness between the two parties over the Punjab situation, the PML-N would not allow any “undemocratic third force” to intervene and would side with the government if it ever happened. This, he said, was his party’s commitment.

He said the two parties had to act together because no individual or a single party could tackle the prevailing critical situation facing the country amid foreign pressures, economic hardships and security threats with insurgencies in the NWFP and Balochistan. But he said the rulers must realise that “if they set fire to others’ house their own palaces will not remain safe”.

“If you will attack the Punjab assembly and lock its doors, then this assembly will also not be able to work,” he said, warning the government of continued protests if the situation was not remedied.

But the opposition leader said he would not beg the government to do something to end the disqualification of the Sharif brothers or to return the Punjab government to the PML-N.

“Our sincere appeal to the government is the only one way to solve this problem is that Pakistan’s real judiciary be restored.”

The house was adjourned until 4pm on Tuesday.
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