But Pakistan Muslim League-Q president Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain said these would be only “minor amendments” in the Constitution (Seventeenth Amendment) Bill that the MMA had said was not in accord with its deal with the ruling party to settle the 13-month-old controversy over President Pervez Musharraf’s Legal Framework Order (LFO).
Minister of State for Law and Parliamentary Affairs Mohammad Raza Hayat Hiraj said he would move the planned amendments on Sunday as he wound up the general debate after a day-long sitting marked by recriminative exchanges between members of the ruling coalition and the ARD which opposes the government-MMA deal.
He did not explain the proposed amendments, which he seemed to have been discussing with MMA leaders even inside the lower house after a meeting earlier in the day between the MMA and PML negotiators.
While MMA sources said the ruling party had agreed to meet the alliance’s objections to the government’s position that presidential decrees forming the LFO had already become part of the 1973 constitution and the mention in the bill about the creation of the National Security Council (NSC) through an act of parliament.
But Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain told Dawn: “These will be minor amendments.”
He made the remark at the end of the National Assembly sitting when asked about the demand made on Friday by MMA parliamentary leader Qazi Hussain Ahmed for redrafting the bill, and said there was actually not much difference between the two sides.
Both the PML-Q and MMA have committed in their agreement signed on Wednesday to get the bill passed by a two-thirds majority in both houses of parliament before January 1.
The Senate, which was prorogued on Friday after a 22-day session, was on Sunday summoned again to meet on Monday.
During the evening sitting of the National Assembly, Prime Minister Zafarullah Khan Jamali went to the desk of MMA secretary-general Maulana Fazlur Rehman and sat beside him for quite some time possibly to discuss the proposed amendments.
Mr Hiraj was also seen showing some draft separately to Qazi Hussain Ahmed and Maulana Fazlur Rehman in what appeared to be an attempt to seek their consent to the proposed amendment.
While most speakers from the main ARD parties — the People’s Party Parliamentarians (PPP) and the Pakistan Muslim League-N — and their allies rejected the bill outright, the debate often degenerated into bitter accusations after National Alliance chief and former president Farooq Ahmed Khan Leghari justified his dismissal of then prime minister Benazir Bhutto in 1996 on disputed charges of corruption and misrule.
Those who supported the bill included Water and Power Minister Aftab Ahmad Khan Sherpao, who heads his PPP-S faction, PPP-Patriots parliamentary leader Sher Afgan Niazi and PML-Z chief Ejazul Haq.
Mr Leghari described the government-MMA agreement as a good omen for democracy and said it was time “when we should focus on important issues like Kashmir, our nuclear programme, rampant unemployment and poverty alleviation”.
He said he had always opposed the constitution’s article 58(2) (b) empowering a president to dismiss a prime minister and dissolve the National Assembly — reintroduced through the LFO — for its potential to destabilise the political and democratic process. But he justified his use of the same powers to dismiss the Bhutto government that he said was corrupt, violated constitution, infringed provincial autonomy, engaged in custodial killings as a matter of state policy and put the executive and the superior judiciary at loggerheads.
He said he had acted in supreme national interest or the military would have intervened.
His speech attracted strong rebuttals from several PPP speakers, including party chief whip Khurshid Ahmed Shah, who in turn provoked protests from the former president’s son and Information Technology and Telecom Minister Awais Ahmed Khan Leghari and several other members of his alliance.
Most hard-hitting speech from the opposition came from Pashtunkhawa Milli Awami Party chief Mahmood Khan Achakzai who said supporting the official bill agreeing to legitimise sweeping powers to a president in military uniform would amount to treason and called for a courageous stand from politicians to stop military’s interference in politics.
He said frequent military interventions and violations of the 1973 Constitution had made it necessary for the country to have a new constitution.
Pakistan Tehrik-i-Insaaf chief Imran Khan said the government-MMA agreement allowing the president to remain in uniform for another year was devoid of democratic traditions and that the provision for General Musharraf to seek a vote of confidence from parliament and four provincial assemblies instead of adopting constitutional procedure for presidential election would open doors for future adventurists to intervene.
PPP’s Manzoor Wassan suggested that the president should be penalised if the Supreme Court rejected a presidential action under article 58 (2) (b).
At the outset, the house unanimously adopted a resolution to condole death of MMA chief Maulana Shah Ahmed Noorani.