ISLAMABAD, Sept 5: The Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal on Tuesday decided not to quit the Balochistan coalition government and the assembly, but threatened to quit the ‘national and Balochistan assemblies’ if the government continued its efforts to get the amended Hudood bill passed.

MMA sources told Dawn the decision to withdraw the alliance from the Balochistan government had been delayed at the request of opposition parties, particularly the Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz), which wanted an opposition consensus on the issue.

An MMA meeting observed that since the Jamhoori Watan Party, whose leader Nawab Akbar Bugti had been killed in a military operation, had not yet decided to quit the assemblies, it would be early for the alliance to take such a decision at this stage.

The alliance’s supreme council, which met with its president Qazi Hussain Ahmed in the chair, deliberated the situation in Balochistan in the wake of the killing and ‘official’ burial of Nawab Bugti. It condemned the ‘unnecessary’ operation in the province and demanded an immediate halt to it.

The alliance decided to continue to resist government’s efforts to get the proposed protection of women’s rights bill passed in the lower house and to launch a country-wide ‘protection of shariat campaign’.

Briefing media personnel after the meeting, MMA Secretary- General Maulana Fazlur Rehman said the People’s Party Parliamentarians’ support to the proposed law was a result of government efforts to divide the opposition when it was forging a grand opposition alliance to oust the army from the corridors of power.

He said the MMA had decided to delay a decision to quit the Balochistan Assembly and the government in order to prevent imposition of governor’s rule in the province and to gain time for opening dialogue with other opposition parties, especially the nationalist parties of Balochistan, to forge a consensus on the issue.

He said the option of moving a no-trust motion against the Balochistan chief minister would also be discussed with the provincial opposition parties.

Maulana Fazl said the MMA meeting observed that price hike, unemployment and sense of insecurity among the masses had increased manifold and tension and uncertainty in the country’s political atmosphere had grown to new proportions.