ISLAMABAD, Feb 20: Opposition parties cried foul as the government abruptly prorogued the National Assembly on Monday, blocking planned protests against the arrest of some house members and cutting short a debate on the publication of blasphemous cartoons in some newspapers in the West.

Opposition members chanted “Go Musharraf go,” “Lathi, Goli Ki Sarkar, Nahin Chalegi” (rule of stick and bullet will not work) as Speaker Chaudhry Amir Hussain took only a few minutes to conclude the 18-day session when he found the house lacked quorum immediately after a rare start of proceedings on time.

In an apparent heightening of political tension amid continuing protests over the cartoons published in some European newspapers, leaders of opposition parties poured scorn on the government at a news conference later and in speeches to a crowd of protesters outside parliament.

The opposition had planned to discuss the detention of five members of the National Assembly in connection with anti-cartoon protests while Monday was also set as the last day of an unfinished debate on the cartoons.

But immediately after the house met on schedule at 4:30pm and the speaker had only informed it about the detention of five opposition members, a ruling coalition member, Ms Khurshid Afghan of the PML-F, invited the chair’s attention to a lack of quorum.

The speaker ordered the bells to be rung for five minutes to tell members present in the building to come to the chamber, after which a count showed only 53 members — most of them from the opposition — were present in the 342-seat house.

Instead of the usual practice of adjourning the house for some time in such situations, the speaker surprised the opposition by immediately reading out an order from President Pervez Musharraf, proroguing the house.

It was a rare occasion that the speaker took his seat right on time to start the proceedings, which usually started late, encouraging a late-coming habit among members, who paid for it dearly on Monday.

Opposition leaders said they had expected the session to continue until Feb 24 and the speaker had assured them in a house business advisory committee before the start of the proceedings to allow them to speak about the detention and arrest of their colleagues.

But they said the speaker changed his mind when the house met a few minutes later.

Opposition sources said the opposition parties had planned to requisition another session of the house for which a formal application could be filed on Tuesday, after which the speaker would be obliged to call the session within 15 days.

“Whatever happened today made a joke of parliament,” Makhdoom Amin Fahim, president of the People’s Party Parliamentarians (PPP), told reporters afterwards.

“What would have happened if we had been allowed to speak (on arrests), which is our constitutional right?” he asked.

Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal member Liaqat Baloch accused the government of “spoiling the situation” while taking what he called a path of retreat, and warned ruling party members against “lending their shoulders to the military dictatorship”.

PPP’s secretary-general Raja Pervez Ashraf complained of a curfew-like situation around parliament building as he referred to a heavy deployment of riot police in the area and accused the speaker of going back on a promise to let opposition parties speak on the detention five members.

One of the detainees, MMA president Qazi Hussain Ahmed, was released on Monday morning after only a day of house arrest in Lahore, from where he arrived in Islamabad later to chair a meeting of the Supreme Council of the six-party alliance.

The remaining four — Mian Mohammad Aslam and Hanif Abbasi of the MMA, Zamurrad Khan of the PPP and Saad Rafiq of the Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz group) are still in the lockup.

Mr Rafiq was detained last week for his alleged involvement in the Feb 14 violent protests in Lahore. The other three had been detained on Sunday when a government ban on an MMA-called protest march in Islamabad led to clashes between protesters and police.