LAHORE, May 23: Punjab Assembly Speaker Afzal Sahi on Monday refused to accept opposition leader Qasim Zia as parliamentary leader of his party —- the PPP. Accepting the reference filed by Mr Zia against PPP MPA Khalid Wattoo for floor crossing to join the PML, Mr Sahi declined to further process it asking the former to establish his competence to file the case as parliamentary leader.

Article 63-A of the Constitution authorizes the parliamentary leader of a party to file a reference against any colleague for his/her disqualification on charges of violating party policy in the house or joining any other party. The law binds the speaker to send it to the Election Commission within two days.

“The law is clear that a parliamentary leader can file a (disqualification) reference, but all laws and rules are silent on who the parliamentary leader is,” Sahi told Zia. “Only courts can interpret this (ambiguity).”

The speaker had earlier withheld, on the same grounds, PML-N references against three defecting MPAs —- Ahad Malik, Begum Rehana Jameel and Saba Sadiq.

The opposition leader contested the speaker’s views citing assembly record to establish his status as parliamentary leader and offering to submit party’s nomination or a singed letter by all fellow MPAs endorsing his claim to the office.

But Mr Sahi said unseating of an MPA was not such a casual matter that could be decided on whims instead of laws and rules. “When the Constitution and laws are silent on a matter, the courts are the best forum to decide it,” he insisted.

Party members and newspapers used to mention an office of the deputy opposition leader while no such office existed in any law and house, he said negating Zia’s argument.

Qasim Zia protested that Mr Sahi was talking of the basic law today, but he had ignored the same on Gen Musharraf’s uniform issue (when the assembly was passing a resolution to approve it).

Mr Sahi replied that he had not asked Gen Musharraf to wear the military uniform, and added that the speaker should not be blamed for the government’s assembly business.

“I have not yet seen the Election Commission rules,” he said when PPP spokesman Naveed Chaudhry, who along with Advocate Raja Zulqarnain, was accompanying Mr Zia, quoted the rules to substantiate the opposition leader’s argument.

He would not promise to reply in black and white on the reference issue.

Answering a question that as absence of a definition of the parliamentary leader in any law or rules was a problem of the speaker and not the aggrieved party in filing a reference so he should move the court, Mr Sahi said it was not his problem. Actually he did not want to unseat any assembly member, he said.

Talking to reporters in his chamber, Qasim Zia alleged that the speaker was under pressure, and he was looking like a member of the ruling PML and not a custodian of the house. He asserted that anyone’s claim to the office of the parliamentary leader could be challenged from within the party, and the speaker had nothing to do with it.

He said they would finalize the future line of action after convening a parliamentary party meeting soon.

He believed that either the speaker would respond to their reference within two days or after June 1.

Asked why PPP MPs were abandoning the party, he said some of them had been offered incentives and others frightened to change loyalties.

Meanwhile, the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal has also filed a reference against its MPA Fiazul Hassan Chauhan on charges of defection.

The reference was submitted to the assembly secretariat by MMA’s parliamentary leader Asghar Ali Gujjar.