ISLAMABAD, Feb 21: The ruling coalition kept its cool against an opposition uproar and delaying tactics in the National Assembly on Thursday to push through a bill to create a new medical university in Islamabad, named after executed former prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto.

While no arguments were advanced in the house and there was no note of dissent with the report of a bipartisan house standing committee that said it unanimously recommended the bill’s passage, the opposition’s appeared to be more of an anti-Bhutto outburst of the opponents of the ruling Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) 34 years after its leader’s controversial hanging.

In the absence of its senior leaders from the house, a low-level leadership of the opposition Pakistan Muslim League-N (PML-N) first forced a suspension of the house for lack of quorum and then, after the PPP-led coalition collected enough lawmakers to make the quorum, jumped in with loud slogan-chanting that continued throughout the process of the passage of the 17-clause bill.

The Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), which left the coalition government only last week, joined the protest with its members standing in their seats, holding portraits of Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah, as did the PML-N members.

But they did not join the PML-N chants like “na-manzoor, na-manzoor” and against “insult of the Quaid”, which seemed to be an effort to give the impression that the bill to upgrade the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (PIMS) to Shaheed Zulfikar Ali Bhutto Medical University with a degree-awarding status was derogatory to the founder of Pakistan, after whom Islamabad’s main state-run university is already named.

The first noisy seen of what is likely to be the last session of the house before the expiry of its five-year term next month was in sharp contrast to an unusual near consensus seen on both sides of the aisle the previous day in a protest against perceived vilification of parliamentarians blamed on Election Commission officials and a section of the media after the issue was raised by Leader of Opposition Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan.

It started with a usual PML-N loudmouth, Mohammad Hanif Abbasi, coming running to point out to Deputy Speaker Faisal Karim Kundi that the house lacked quorum when it was dealing with a call-attention notice as the first item of the day’s agenda and then led about 15 other party colleagues out of the chamber as the chair ordered a count.

The chair suspended the proceedings after a count showed the 342-seat house was short of a quorum of 86 members. And when the house reassembled about an hour later with the chair declaring it “in order”, PML-N lawmakers too rushed in, chanting “na-manzoor, na-manzoor” even before the bill they later opposed was taken up for consideration. Soon portraits of the Quaid-i-Azam were distributed among them and MQM members, who had earlier stayed inside the house when the PML-N had stormed out.

Amid loud slogan-chanting -- with several PML-N protesters leaving their desks and forming a crowd in front of the dais -- Mr Kundi’s invitation to a PML-N legal mind, Zahid Hamid, to speak on his formal opposition to the bill’s consideration produced no result, prompting PPP chief whip and Religious Affairs Minister Khursheed Ahmed Shah to suggest clause-by-clause voting and then final voting on the bill, whose result was greeted with loud desk-thumping from the treasury benches.

The bill, which must be passed also by the Senate to become law, provides for the establishment of the university by reconstituting PIMS, with its functions including provision of “instruction in such teaching subjects, disciplines or branches of learning at graduate and post-graduate level as it may deem fit”, and for “research, advancement and dissemination of knowledge in such manner as it may determine”.

The university will exercise jurisdiction within the federal capital in respect of medical colleges and institutions in the public and private sectors and provide affiliation to them.

The house did not take up another government bill on the day’s agenda, designed to validate a Defence Housing Authority in Islamabad, before it was adjourned until 11am on Friday.