ISLAMABAD June 2: The Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal (MMA) and the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (Muttahida) had a prolonged verbal clash in the National Assembly on Thursday forcing the speaker to adjourn the session for the day, without completion of the debate on recent suicide attacks and killing of two Jamaat-i-Islami leaders in Karachi. The MMA lawmakers not only stopped Muttahida’s parliamentary leader Dr Farooq Sattar from speaking on the issue but also levelled allegations of the party’s involvement in kidnappings for ransom, extortions of money and killing of innocent people.

No treasury member came out in support of the Muttahida except for the deputy speaker who wanted to allow its leader to use the right of reply and to clear his party’s position. When the MMA and Muttahida lawmakers started shouting and hurling allegations on each other, deputy speaker Sardar Yaqub Khan, who was presiding over the post-Maghrib session, tried in vain to persuade the religious alliance to allow Dr Sattar to speak.

Even then, when Dr Sattar was given the mike, the MMA members stood up and started loudly protesting against the permission given to him to speak.

Liaquat Baloch, who was entrusted with the task of calming his fellow lawmakers, said that the Muttahida should have submitted its adjournment motion if it was interested in the debate and it should not be given the floor before completion of speeches of the opposition side. He alleged that the Muttahida was a terrorist outfit flourishing on extortion, kidnapping for ransom and random killing of its opponents.

Amid uproar and noisy scenes, the deputy speaker tried thrice to let Dr Sattar start his speech but the MMA lawmakers continued shouts of ‘terrorists’, ‘murderers’ and ‘extortionists’. Muttahida members Haider Abbas Rizvi, Kunwar Khalid Yunus, Israul Ibad and others tried to counter the MMA by replying in the same coin.

Dr Sattar tried to speak but his voice was subdued by the shouts and slogans and he could only say: “These champions of democracy have no heart to listen to others’ reply.” Earlier, admitted identical adjournment motions moved by Mr Baloch, Mohammad Hussain Mehenti and Asadullah Bhutto of the MMA and Raja Parvez Ashraf and Nayyar Bokhari of the PPP.