ISLAMABAD, July 22: After two days of debate on recurrent violence in Karachi, Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani told the National Assembly on Friday his government would not tolerate disorder in the country’s economic hub and asked all political forces to help maintain peace there.

Soon after his return from a four-day private visit to Britain, the prime minister reached the house in time before it was prorogued after a special opposition-convened session, which also debated other items of the opposition agenda: allegations against the government of disregarding Supreme Court orders and what a joint requisition note of the Pakistan Muslim League-N (PML-N) and Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) called “massive rigging” in Azad Kashmir’s Legislative Assembly elections, which were won by the state chapter of the ruling Pakistan People’s Party (PPP).

But the apparent aim of the opposition move, made at the height of tensions in Karachi earlier this month in the wake of MQM’s departure from the ruling coalition, to bring the government under pressure lost much of its steam after the MQM made peace with the PPP by allowing its Sindh Governor, Ishratul Ibad, to withdraw his resignation and divisions on other issues and absence of their senior leaders also kept the opposition parties from putting up a strong show.

However, the MQM, which has opted to sit on opposition benches both in parliament and the Sindh provincial Assembly, used fresh eruption of violence in Karachi’s Malir area on Friday morning to lead a second token protest walkout of opposition parties in as many days and two of its members blamed the deadly clashes on alleged “patronage” of the provincial government.

The prime minister, in a brief Urdu-language speech, condemned the new incidents of violence and said he would ask for a report from the provincial government.

“Karachi is Pakistan’s economic hub, where we cannot afford a breakdown of law and order,” he said and added: “All political forces will have to find a solution.”

He said law and order in Karachi was in the interest of the country’s political and economic stability and “we cannot tolerate it to be spoiled”.

ESCAPEE’S APPEARANCE: But, while the house was distracted from its scheduled business by a seemingly disgusting appearance of an opposition lawmaker from Islamabad who had escaped from police custody last week with the help of his armed supporters, nobody from either the treasury or opposition benches took up Interior Minister Rehman Malik’s offer during a similar debate in the Senate on Thursday to constitute an all-party parliamentary committee to investigate causes of Karachi violence.

Six days after his re-arrest, PML-N member Anjum Aqeel Khan, who faces terrorism charges for his July 15 escape amid gunfire from outside a police station in the capital in addition to two alleged property fraud cases, was brought to the house from Federal Investigation Agency custody in response to a production order issued by Speaker Fehmida Mirza, to be embraced by his party colleagues and even by PPP chief whip Khursheed Ahmad Shah.

And when given the floor later by Deputy Speaker Fasisal Karim Kundi, the member, amid repeated cheers from PML-N desks, protested innocence in property fraud cases, including one involving a billions of rupees worth deal with National Police Foundation and initiated on Supreme Court orders, and credited his supporters’ action in snatching him from police custody to their “love” for him and his party, which has already issued a show-cause notice to him to explain his conduct.

Strangely, nobody from the government contested Mr Khan’s protestations or comment on his demand for a parliamentary committee to probe charges against him.

But a senior PML-N member, Khawaja Saad Rafiq, explaining what he called the party position on the issue, said while his party would accept any verdict of the Supreme Court, it had suspended the membership of some party office-bearers for snatching Mr Khan from police custody and that Mr Khan must explain “why he did not resist (this act) as much as he should have”.

There was also no government response to a call from an estranged PPP member and former foreign minister, Shah Mahmood Qureshi, for the formation of all-party committee of the house to probe alleged figure-fudging in an original claim that the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) had overshot its tax-collection target for fiscal 2010-11. That claim was retracted, in a separate talk to Dawn on Friday, by FBR chairman Salman Siddique who said the collection was actually short of the target by Rs38 billion.