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| 36 APDM MPAs resign from NWFP PA sans JUI-F |
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Saturday, October 06, 2007
By Syed Bukhar Shah
PESHAWAR: Thirty-six members of the NWFP Assembly, belonging to the All Parties Democratic Movement (APDM), resigned from the assembly membership on Friday.
However, 41 MPAs belonging to the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam – a component party of the ruling Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal and the APDM – did not join them, with the party chief, Maulana Fazlur Rehman, announcing that they would quit the assembly on Monday.
The JUI-F MPAs have decided to resign after defeating the no-confidence motion against Chief Minister Akram Durrani, tabled by 32 MPAs mostly belonging to the PML-Q and the PPP-S. The motion would be put to vote on October 8. The JUI-F also intends to move a vote of confidence in the chief minister, who belongs to the party, the same day before putting in their resignations.
The resignations of 36 APDM MPAs exposed differences between the component parties of the alliance, particularly the disagreement between the JUI-F and the Jamaat-e-Islami (JI).
The resignations came a day ahead of the presidential election being held today (Saturday). As the NWFP Assembly is intact, the pro-Musharraf MPAs would be able to cast their votes for the uniformed president.
Those who have resigned include 24 members of Jamaat-e-Islami, eight of Awami National Party (ANP) and four of Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N). Speaker Bakht Jehan Khan, who also belongs to the JI, did not resign because of the non-availability of the deputy speaker. The lone MPA from the Pakistan Tehrik-e-Insaf, Mian Nisar Gul, whose party is also a part of the APDM, also did not resign.
The JI provincial Amir Sirajul Haq and PML-N parliamentary leader Anwar Kamal Marwat presented the resignations of their party legislators to the speaker at his chamber before the assembly session on Friday morning.
Almost, all the 24 JI and four PML-N MPAs later came to the assembly hall and watched the proceedings from the visitors’ gallery. Eight members of the Awami National Party (ANP) submitted their resignations to the speaker after reading their resignations one by one and registering their protest on the floor of the House. They said they were resigning in protest against the presidential election from the sitting assemblies. Later, they left the assembly hall and joined their colleagues in the visitors’ gallery.
A dissident MMA MPA from Shangla, Pir Mohammad Khan also resigned but submitted his resignation to the speaker in his chamber, as he was not allowed to present it on the floor of the House.
Pir Mohammad Khan complained in his resignation about the partial and step-motherly attitude meted out to him by his own party leaders for the last five years. Since he was elected from JI on the MMA ticket and with the resignation of all of his party colleagues from the assembly, he also wanted to return his party’s trust.
Though the treasury benches raised voices against those resignations on the floor of the House but most of them embraced the Law Minister Malik Zafar Azam, shook hands with him and jointly raised slogans of “Go Musharraf Go” before occupying their seats in the visitors’ gallery.
Siraj said the resignations would not affect the MMA and the APDM because those had been constituted for a greater cause that was still there. The MMA and APDM, he said, were not election alliances but were formed for bringing an Islamic revolution and elimination of dictatorship. The JUI-F, he said, was of the view that resignations should be given after the presidential election while the rest of the parties thought it would be useless after the completion of the presidential election process. “Such differences also erupted in the past but were resolved.”
Law Minister Zafar Azam reminded that his party, the JUI-F, had tried its level best to convince their colleagues to follow the earlier decisions of the APDM because “we could not change those decisions”.
According to the APDM decisions, members of the component parties were to resist the no-confidence against the chief minister and not leave the assembly to the pro-Musharraf parties. Still, Azam did not agree with a questioner that his party and the chief minister had lost the confidence of majority in the 124-member House. “We still have a majority, which we will prove. We will dissolve the assembly and not hand it over to the pro-Musharraf parties.”
The ANP parliamentary leader Bashir Bilour said that the APDM members from the National and provincial assemblies had resigned but the irresponsible rulers were bent upon re-electing President Gen Musharraf in uniform. He said his party would protest in all the districts to condemn the presidential election. He avoided comments as to whether the MMA and APDM still existed, saying it was up to the leadership to decide about its status.
Following the resignations, Chief Minister Akram Durrani sacked all the six provincial ministers belonging to the Jamaat-e-Islami. A brief statement issued to the media by the Chief Minister Secretariat on Friday evening said Durrani had removed the six provincial ministers belonging to Jamaat-e-Islami. The statement did not mention names of the ministers.
However, when press secretary of the chief minister, Behramand Khan was contacted, he argued that the statement was issued in a hurry but said the six JI provincial ministers in Durrani’s cabinet were known to everybody.
The ministers terminated included Shah Raz Khan, Minister for Finance, Forest and Environment, Inayatullah Khan, Health, Hafiz Hashmat Khan, Zakat and Ushr, Fazle Rabbani, Food and Excise and Taxation, Hussain Ahmad Kanju, Science and Technology and IT, and Kashif Azam, Population and Welfare.
The chief minister did not appoint other ministers to replace them.
APP adds: Earlier, the speaker announced the names of the JI and PML-N members who tendered resignations to him in his chamber under Article 164 of the Constitution read with rules 50 of the Assembly Procedures and Conduct of Business.
Speaker Bakht Jehan Khan told the reporters in his chamber that resignations of the MPAs would be sent to the Election Commission shortly. Parliamentary leader of PPPP Abdul Akbar Khan told newsmen that his party would not cast vote in the presidential election being held in the assembly building today.
The chair put off proceedings of the house till October 8, when the house would take up no-trust motion of the PML-Q and PPP-S against the chief minister for voting. The names of 24 members of the JI who resigned from the NWFP Assembly are Sirajul Haq, Nadar Shah, Habibur Rehman, Muhammad Amin, Malik Amirzada Khan, Sabira Shakir, Fouzia Naz, Nargis Zain, Shagufta Naz, Fouzia Farrukh, Mst Aftab Shabbir, Shahraz Khan, Saeed Gul, Dr Zakirullah Khan, Muzaffar Said advocate, Fazle Rabbani, Farid Khan, Inayatullah Khan, Javed Mohmand, Kashif Azam, Hussain Ahmed Kanju, Hafiz Hashmat Khan, Malik Hayat Khan and Pir Muhammad Khan.
The ANP members were Bashir Ahmed Bilour, Mukhtiar Ali Khan, Amir Rehman, Shaukat Habib, Yasmeen Pir Muhammad Khan, Sarfraz Khan, Farah Aaqil Shah and Khalil Abbas. The PMN-N members included Anwar Kamal Khan Marwat, Zafarullah Khan Marwat, Imtiaz Bukhari and Sardar Mumtaz Abbasi. One of the PML-N members Malik Imran has defected to the JUI-F and has not resigned from the assembly. Among those who resigned included six provincial ministers Inayatullah Khan, Fazle Rabbani, advocate, Hafiz Hashmat Khan, Shahraz Khan, Hussain Ahmed Kanju and Kashif Azam.
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