Daily News Pakistan

ISLAMABAD: In a move to wrest political initiative after a retreat on the controversial National Reconciliation Ordinance (NRO) he finally said had been dumped, Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani told the National Assembly on Tuesday his government would seek early restoration of parliament’s powers, tackle people’s pressing problems and launch an austerity drive.

He said he had asked the chairman of a joint parliamentary committee to expedite recommendations for key constitutional amendments, including curtailment of presidential powers, and called an emergency meeting of his cabinet and provincial chief ministers to discuss ways to deal with problems like the prevailing sugar crisis, power cuts and falling paddy prices.

The prime minister also promised to seek passage of a resolution by the house to call for provision of jobs on merit, but did not say when nor elaborate on the necessity of such a move.

The prime minister’s speech was cheered by desk-thumping from all sections of the house, only a day after the opposition was up in arms over the NRO before an overnight leadership meeting of the ruling coalition, chaired by President Asif Ali Zardari, decided not to seek parliamentary approval for former president Pervez Musharraf’s decree, which facilitated the emergence of the present democratic setup but which was seen by critics as vehicle to legitimise corruption.

Several opposition members came to Mr Gilani’s desk to congratulate or thank him for his latest moves, in sharp contrast to Monday’s tense atmosphere when the opposition had walked out without listening to him.

‘On NRO, we have decided not to bring it to the house,’ he said about a bill approved by a house standing committee last week that the government had planned to introduce for parliamentary approval of the ordinance that provided for the withdrawal of criminal cases registered for political reasons or victimisation between January 1986 and Oct 12, 1999, with the declared aim to ‘promote national reconciliation, foster mutual confidence amongst holders of public office and remove the vestiges of political vendetta and victimisation’.

‘Let the court decide. Whatever the decision we will accept,’ he said about possible legal challenges to the beneficiaries of the Oct 5, 2007, ordinance, who include Mr Zardari vis-à-vis disputed corruption charges brought against him in the 1990s by the government of then prime minister Nawaz Sharif, though legal experts say he remains immune from prosecution so long he holds the office of president.

Mr Gilani, who had told the house on the opening day of its present session on Monday after an opposition protest walkout that the NRO was still being reviewed, said his coalition had not made it a matter of ego and decided not to seek its approval in accordance with ‘the sense of the house’.

He said his Pakistan People’s Party was sincere to implement pledges made in the Charter of Democracy signed by its assassinated leader Benazir Bhutto and Pakistan Muslim League-N leader Nawaz Sharif in 2006, including the repeal of the controversial Seventeenth Amendment that legitimised General Musharraf’s military rule and his assumption of the usually prime ministerial powers to dissolve the National Assembly and appoint armed forces’ chiefs, provincial governors and the chief election commissioner.

‘Even today I asked the chairman of the parliamentary committee (Mian Raza Rabbani) to put (its job) on a fast track,’ Mr Gilani said and promised to seek restoration of what he called a ‘balance between the powers of the presidency and parliament’ by getting the 17th Amendment and Article 58(2)b relating to the dissolution of the lower house repealed. ‘We will protect all institutions and make … (them) strong.’

Basically the prime minister rose to speak in connection with a protest day observed by both the PPP and the PML-N to mark the second anniversary of the Nov 3, 2007, emergency proclamation of General Musharraf, who used his extra-constitutional move in his capacity as army chief to sack 60 judges of the Supreme Court and four provincial high courts and give constitutional protection to the NRO along many other decrees.

Black armbands were worn by PPP and PML-N members as a mark of protest, but not by General Musharraf’s former loyalists of the Pakistan Muslim League-Q, who had joined hands with the PML-N in Monday’s anti-NRO protest, and of government-allied Muttahida Qaumi Movement.

PML-N members left the house for some time to walk up to the nearby Supreme Court in connection with the day after speeches by PPP chief-whip and Labour and Manpower Minister Khurshisd Ahmed Shah, leader of opposition Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan and PML-Q leader Amir Muqam.

More speeches, including one by Interior Minister Rehman Malik, came afterwards, consuming the whole of what was a private members’ day to exclusion of the listed agenda before the house was adjourned until 4pm on Wednesday.

Speaker Fehmida Mirza, taking exception to a newspaper report, denied in the house that she or her husband, Sindh Home Minister Zulfikar Mirza, had benefited from the NRO as was also done by PPP member Nawab Yousuf Talpur.