ISLAMABAD, Sept 8: While the combined opposition claimed that it would effectively prove its nationwide popularity with a complete shutdown on Friday, government leaders continued to insist that it would be ‘business as usual’ and ‘the wheel will continue to move’.

The strike call was given on Sept 4 by a conference of leaders of major opposition parties to prove that people supported their demands for restoration of the Constitution as it stood before the military takeover of 1999, formation of an independent election commission and end to army’s interference in national politics. The opposition also wants to protest against what it terms large-scale rigging in local body elections and to demand that General Pervez Musharraf must immediately quit the posts of both the president and the army chief.

Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz has criticized the strike call and described it as an attempt to block the wheel of development. And Chaudhry Shujaat, the president of the ruling PML, has said that it will be a ‘no-show’ and “there will be work as usual”.

But the deputy secretary-general of the MMA, Liaquat Baloch, who is coordinator of the 12-member steering committee set up by the Sept 4 conference, claimed that the opposition had done its home-work by reaching out to all concerned quarters in cities and districts across the country to ensure a complete wheel-jam.

According to steering committee’s decisions, he said, the opposition MPs would express their protest on the floor of the National Assembly and then stage a sit-in outside the parliament house to expose what he said the government’s failures on all fronts.

Mr Baloch said the first objective of the opposition was to force General Musharraf to step down from both the offices he was ‘occupying unconstitutionally’ “after which the option of quitting assembly seats will be considered.”