ISLAMABAD, March 4: After more protests, the government assured the National Assembly on Tuesday that copies of the constitution as amended by the controversial Legal Framework Order, which opposition parties want to throw out, were ready and would be given to all house members on Wednesday.
Parliamentary sources said the formal presentation of the amended constitution in the assembly was likely to spark a stormy debate in the 342-seat lower house over the status of the LFO that gives sweeping powers to President Pervez Musharraf.
The assurance came after three major opposition parties — the People’s Party Parliamentarians, the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal and the Pakistan Muslim League-N — staged token walkouts from the house one after the other in their second such protest in two days.
The LFO, a package of constitutional amendments by the president, has been at the centre of a constitutional row between the government and opposition parties since the inauguration of the newly elected assembly in November.
At the assembly’s inaugural session on Nov 16, all major opposition parties had said their members were taking oath under the 1973 constitution as it stood before General Musharraf seized power in the 1999 coup and that they would not recognize the LFO amendments without parliamentary approval.
Government spokesmen have been saying the constitution, suspended by Gen Musharraf after the Oct 12, 1999 coup and only partially revived last November, has already been amended by the LFO but had not distributed its copies widely in a move seemingly aimed at avoiding provoking opposition parties.
But opposition parties have repeatedly said they will not accept any constitutional amendment until it is passed by both houses of parliament by the required two-thirds majority.
At least one major opposition leader, MMA’s parliamentary leader and Jamaat-i-Islami chief Qazi Hussain Ahmed, has said he will not be in parliament if the present form of LFO — empowering Gen Musharraf to be president and army chief for five more years, dissolve the National Assembly and sack prime ministers — is made part of the constitution.
Opposition members revived the issue on Monday and later on Tuesday, when PML-N leader Makhdoom Javed Hashmi led his party members in a walkout protesting against the non-availability of the new copies of the constitution, which he said seemed to have been “lost”.
They were followed by their PPP allies, who had first agitated the matter on Monday and urged Speaker Chaudhry Amir Hussain to clarify the LFO’s position after finding a copy of the amended constitution in the assembly’s library.
Both the PPP and PML-N ended their walkout after a while but stormed out with the MMA, which staged its own walkout on the same issue after the speaker ruled out a point of order raised by Qazi Hussain Ahmed.
Minister of State for Law, Justice, Human Rights and Parliamentary Affairs Mohammad Raza Hayat Harraj assured the house that the constitution’s new copies would be provided to house members “within a few days”.
But as the issue did not seem to die down during a generally disorderly first private members’ day of the new assembly, he later came up with a more specific assurance that the copies “will be available...to all members of the house” by Wednesday, when the assembly is to meet at 5pm.
Some order in the house was restored after repeated appeals by the speaker that members, many of whom are newcomers, adhere to the rules of procedure.
COMPUTER: While the speaker said he would follow the computer installed by his side in allowing members to rise to speak on their turn, women members and several of their male counterparts complained they were not allowed to speak despite repeated attempts.
“The women members press the button (on their desk for turn to speak) for hours but they do not catch your eye,” one woman member told the speaker.
“I see a biased attitude towards women. I have been trying for an hour,” said another.
Speaker Hussain said he could allow some relaxation of rules in view of inexperience of members, some of whom agitated all sorts of issues from travel difficulties caused by snowfall in remote Chitral to allegedly high utility bills charged at parliamentary lodges in Islamabad.
“Slowly you will learn,” he often told members.
M.P. Bhandara, the veteran parliamentarian, made a passionate appeal for order in the house that he saw falling into “chaos” as he sought leave to introduce a private bill to amend the constitution to shorten the assembly’s five-year term to four years and reduce the requirement of quorum to one-eighth from one-fourth of the house membership.
But he agreed to defer his bill to the next private members’ day on a request from the Pakistan Muslim League-Q’s chief whip and Labour, Manpower and Overseas Pakistanis Minister Abdul Sattar Laleka after several members said they would like to see the bill before entertaining it.
Mr Bhandara said the life of the assembly should be cut down to four years because the government of none of the prime ministers it elected since 1985 could last more than three years.
The house was unusually orderly when it discussed a proposed amendment in rules of procedure moved by PPP’s former finance minister Syed Naveed Qamar that would require the government to set a calendar of sessions for a parliamentary year at the start of the first session after a general election and at the start of the first session each year.
The government did not oppose the move and both sides agreed to have it fine-tuned by a house committee