ISLAMABAD, Aug 30: Opposition members said they feared worse days ahead while President Pervez Musharraf ruled the country as they kept up their assault on the government on Tuesday in a National Assembly debate on alleged rigging of recent local bodies’ elections.
The treasury benches put up only a subdued defence before the opposition forced an early adjournment of the house to deny a minister a chance to wind up the two-day debate and reply to critics’ charges.
It was the third government defeat within two days of the session when speaker Chaudhry Amir Hussain was forced to adjourn the lower house until 9.30am on Friday for lack of quorum before Parliamentary Affairs Minister Sher Afgan Khan Niazi could make his planned winding up speech.
“We don’t want to listen to this minister’s speech,” Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal (MMA) alliance member Hafiz Hussain Ahmed said as he pointed out the lack of quorum in the house before the speaker could give floor to Mr Niazi, who was also at the centre of two embarrassing government defeats on the first day of the session on Monday.
Two counts ordered by the chair before and after bells were rung to call absent members to come back to the hall showed the attendance was far short of a required quorum of 86 members, or one-fourth of the 342-seat house, which earlier saw opposition members blasting the government for what some of them called unprecedented rigging in the first two phases of the local elections on August 18 and August 25.
The government suffered double defeat on the opening day of the session on Monday when a government motion for condoning a delay in the presentation of a standing committee report on a bill was defeated and later when it failed to stop the opposition-sought debate on alleged vote-rigging.
“The rigging started from the top and reached the bottom,” Makhdoom Amin Fahim, president of the People’s Party Parliamentarians (PPP), said as he accused President Musharraf and the rest of the government machinery of involvement while opening the second day of the debate on opposition adjournment motions.
“There is no hope from Gen Musharraf of holding free and fair elections” he said and warned the government it would be responsible for consequences if the next general elections too were rigged.
PPP secretary-general Raja Pervez Ashraf, Pakistan Tehrik-i-Insaf president Imran Khan and seven other opposition members also spoke mainly targeting the president and Punjab and Sindh chief ministers for alleged rigging and other excesses compared to only four ruling coalition members who challenged opposition charges, but one of them blaming returning officers and their staff.
Narcotics Control Minister Ghulam Bakhsh Khan Mahar denied any rigging by the government and instead accused opposition parties of resorting to violence.
PPP’s Pervez Ashraf said it was the first time that an army chief was openly involved in elections in a partisan role as a rehearsal for the next general elections, but he warned of an eruption of a “simmering lava” of a popular movement against the government.
Imran Khan called for the creation of an independent election commission with the consent of opposition parties, whom he accused of what he called failings like the government by taking part in the local elections knowing the vote would be rigged.
PML-N member Rana Mehmoodul Hassan from Punjab complained the provincial government was pressurising him to change political loyalties by framing murder charges against him, his 70-year-old father and a brother and arresting 70 to 80 of his relatives in Multan district and called for a judicial inquiry into the situation there.
PPP member Ms Naheed Khan said President Musharraf was leading the country to a presidential system of government and wanted to turn the local bodies into an electoral college for his election.
Pakistan Muslim League member Farooq Amjad Mir from Punjab acknowledged rigging but said it was committed on individual basis by whosoever could do it and urged the Election Commission to take action against “the black sheep” among returning officers who engaged in wrongdoing.
Muttahida Qaumi Movement member Haider Abbas Rizvi from Sindh credited what he called review of policies for a better performance of his party in the local elections than in the 2002 general elections when, he said, the party over-estimated its position.
Dr Niazi, speaking on a call-attention notice earlier, said those responsible for preventing women to cast their votes in the local elections must be punished and urged the EC to hold fresh polling in constituencies where such violation of law had been committed.
The call-attention notice from five women members of the PML complained that women were prevented from casting their votes and participating in the elections in 30 union councils of the MMA- ruled North West Frontier Province.