ISLAMABAD, March 5: A tense National Assembly had something to cheer about on Thursday when Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam chief Maulana Fazlur Rehman told it that he and Awami National Party chief Asfandyar Wali Khan had received “encouragement” in new talks with President Asif Ali Zardari and they will now take his proposals to Pakistan Muslim League-N leader Mian Nawaz Sharif in pursuing their mediation to resolve a raging political crisis in the Punjab province.

The two allies of the PPP-led coalition government had met Mr Sharif on Wednesday to listen to his demands, which the JUI leader said they discussed with the president in their second meeting of the series at lunch on Thursday.

“I assure this house that we got encouragement from Mian Sahib yesterday and today we got encouragement also from the president,” he said without specifying the proposals of either side, amid cheers from the house where PML-N lawmakers were not present at the time after a walkout in a continuing protest against a Feb 25 Supreme Court ruling that disqualified Mr Nawaz Sharif and his younger brother and Punjab chief minister Shahbaz Sharif from holding an elective public office. The optimism voiced by the Maulana seemed at variance with continuing PML-N protest rallies mainly in the Punjab province and a claim in Lahore by at least two PML-N members of the Punjab Assembly about the formation of rebel “forward bloc” supported by 25 other lawmakers two days after their party had shown a majority support in the provincial assembly.

PML-N members in the National Assembly walked out the houses shortly after it met about an hour late on Thursday afternoon when Deputy Speaker Faisal Karim Kundi refused to allow party member from Punjab Rana Tanveer Hussain to be the first speaker of the day while parliamentary leaders of some other parties were yet to take their turn to speak in the debate that began with the commencement of the hurriedly-called session last Saturday.

Mr Hussain said speakers from the PML-N, from which opposition leader Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan and parliamentary group leader Khwaja Mohammad Asif had already spoken on the issue, should get precedence because “basically it is our problem … (and) we are the aggrieved party”.

But Mr Kundi did not agree, saying it was “the problem of the whole of Pakistan” and asked Muttahida Qaumi Movement parliamentary leader Haider Abbas Rizvi to make his speech, arousing cries of “shame, shame” from the PMN-N members before they marched out of the house.

Some PPP ministers tried to persuade the PML to end the walkout but failed to bring the protesters back before the house was adjourned unitl 10am on Friday.

Maulana Fazlur Rehman said “political” judgements like the disqualification of the two Sharif brothers, on grounds of controversial convictions under former military president Pervez Musharraf, should not be made by the judiciary and warned the house about what he called “unbearable” consequences of a “new storm” in the country’s most populous province while the country was already fighting “a war for its security and survival”.

About his mediation move along with the ANP leader, he said: “Whatever ground we have traversed so far, we have made progress and we have not been disappointed.”

About their meeting with the PML-N leader and his team in Islamabad on Wednesday evening, he said: “We heard their standpoint, arguments and demands. We agreed with some of their points and disagreed with some others,” the Maulana said about what he called “two-three demands” that, he added, the mediators took to President Zardari.

About the latest meeting with the president, which the Maulana said lasted 1-1/2 hours, he told the house that he asked Mr Zardari to play the role of the head of state rather than of merely co-chairman of the Pakistan People’s Party and regard “all (people) as his children”, to which, he said, the president “gave his attention”.

“He gave us some proposals, which I can’t disclose now,” the JUI chief said.

He also did not say when the mediators would have another meeting with the PML-N leader.

In their speeches earlier, MQM’s Haider Abbas Rizvi, Riaz Husain Pirzada and Raza Hayat Harraj of the Pakistan Muslim League-Q and PPP federal minister Makhdoom Shahabuddin all called for reconciliation to resolve the crisis though they differed on the stances of the two sides.
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