No-confidene motion: ARD to meet on 21st

Published August 16, 2006

ISLAMABAD, Aug 15: A meeting of the heads of component parties of the Alliance for Restoration of Democracy (ARD) has been convened by its chairman Makhdoom Amin Fahim in Islamabad on August 21 to finalise the strategy for the planned no-confidence motion against Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz.

ARD secretary general Iqbal Zafar Jhagra on Tuesday announced that the meeting would be held at the Central Secretariat of the People’s Party Parliamentarians (PPP).

Sources said the ARD leadership would approve the drafts of the no-confidence motion and the charge-sheet against the government being prepared by an 11-member committee, constituted by the opposition leaders after a grand meeting at the Parliament House on August 9.

After the meeting, the combined opposition had announced that it would submit the no-confidence motion against the prime minister to the National Assembly Secretariat on August 23 after compilation of a charge-sheet against the government.

It may be recalled that the decision to move the no-confidence motion against the government was originally taken by the ARD leaders in a meeting held in London on July 2 after the Supreme Court in its short order on June 23 scrapped the privatization of the Pakistan Steel Mills (PSM).