ISLAMABAD, Aug 22: With the opposition all set to bring its no-confidence motion against Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz on Wednesday, the National Assembly is highly likely to witness stormy proceedings.
The ruling coalition’s comfortable majority in the lower house leaves no chance for the success of the motion though, it would put the prime minister and his cabinet on a parliamentary trial which is a part of the opposition’s campaign against the government of President General Pervez Musharraf.
The move was initially planned by the Alliance for Restoration of Democracy (ARD), but later on the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal and smaller opposition groups also joined in.
The move against Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz is going to be the second such move in the country’s parliamentary history. Earlier in 1989, Benazir Bhutto had survived such a move, although much stronger forces were arrayed against her premiership.
A special combined opposition committee, headed by Mahmood Khan Achakzai, chief of Pashtunkhawa Milli Awami Party, has drafted a 325-page charge-sheet against Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz, opposition sources said on Tuesday.
Details of the document were not immediately available.
However, the sources said the document would cite perceived wrongdoings in the scrapped sale of Pakistan Steel Mills (PSM) as well as the privatisation of Habib Bank Limited, Pakistan Telecommunication Company Ltd and Karachi Electric Supply Corporation.
Other charges, said the sources, would include failures in foreign policy, maintenance of law and order, price hike in the country, shortage of sugar and cement, military operations in Balochistan and North and South Waziristan, and the stock market crash last year.
The charge-sheet as well as the notice for the no-confidence resolution will be submitted to the National Assembly Secretariat together on Wednesday morning, they said.
The move follows a heated five-day debate on the PSM issue last week during which opposition members held the prime minister – being the chairman of Cabinet Committee on Privatisation that approved the deal – responsible for the faulty deal. They called for his resignation.
Such calls are likely to be repeated even more vociferously during the debate on no-confidence resolution on Wednesday.
The constitution says a resolution for a no-confidence vote against the prime minister must be moved by at least 20 per cent members of the house, and voted upon after a minimum of three days but not later than seven days.
The prime minister must cease to hold office if the resolution is passed by a majority of the total members of the house.
But since the ruling coalition enjoys support of 201 members of the 342-seat National Assembly against opposition’s 141, there are hardly any chances of a change in the present set-up in the wake of the no-confidence motion.
President Musharraf’s recent interventions to settle differences within the PML and address MQM’s grievances have further consolidated the government position, thereby burying all chances of the success of no-confidence motion against the prime minister.