ISLAMABAD: While the opposition Pakistan Muslim League-N is to decide its strategy for President Asif Ali Zardari’s planned address to a joint session of parliament after Ashura, the dominant thinking in the party leadership is against boycotting the speech.Talking to Express News 24/7, a number of PML-N legislators, including some office-bearers, however, did not rule out a rumpus if the president uses the occasion to speak about his role in the ongoing memo controversy — the issue the PML-N has taken to the Supreme Court.“We cannot be a part of any attempt to pitch the parliament against the judiciary,” PML-N’s deputy secretary general Ahsan Iqbal said.He said the government had so far not formally informed his party or announced anything about the purpose and need for the president’s address. Therefore, he said, it would be premature at this stage to speak about the opposition’s strategy for the parliament’s joint session.
Another PML-N office-bearer, on condition of anonymity, said that keeping in view the past experience there was a little possibility this time that the opposition would boycott the president’s speech.At the same time, he said, there was also a little chance that the opposition members would “silently listen to President Zardari, if he speaks on controversial and sub-judice matters”.
He said there was a general thinking in the PML-N that the boycott of the president’s address to a joint sitting of parliament in March this year was a wrong decision because it had to face a severe criticism from all sides, including the media.
Before the president’s mandatory address to parliament on March 21, the PML-N had announced that it would lodge a strong protest during the speech while staying inside parliament.
But it changed its strategy at the eleventh hour and boycotted the proceedings after raising slogans and creating a rumpus for a short time.
Leader of the Opposition in the National Assembly Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan later told a news conference that the party had changed its protest strategy for the sake of opposition’s unity.
He said the PML-N had decided that its members would lodge a strong protest during the president’s speech, but it had to agree on a least common denominator and boycotted the proceedings for the sake of consensus among opposition parties after the media and political circles criticised that the PML-N had held a meek protest in contrast to its loud claims of giving a tough time to the government during the presidential address.
Giving justification, Chaudhry Nisar had said the party members were unanimous that in no way they would listen to the president and it was on this “least common denominator” that they had agreed with other opposition groups to stage a walkout.
He had also said they had earlier listened to President Zardari silently on three such previous occasions, but they did not want to give “all is well message” to the nation by remaining in the house.
It will be the fifth occasion that President Zardari would address the joint sitting. The PML-N suspects that his forthcoming address to parliament is a part of a “game plan” to evade the Supreme Court’s notice to him to reply to the party’s petition regarding the memo controversy.
Speaking at a news conference in Islamabad on Sunday, Chaudhry Nisar expressed serious “reservations” over the government’s latest move and advised the president to use the forum of Supreme Court if he wanted to get himself cleared.
The Supreme Court last week issued notices to President Zardari and others to respond within 15 days to the petitions filed by PML-N chief Nawaz Sharif regarding the controversial memo allegedly sent by former ambassador to the US Husain Haqqani on behalf of President Zardari to former US military chief Mike Mullen.
The memo allegedly sought Washington’s help to avert a possible military coup and, in return, assured it of revamping the country’s security leadership.
The memo controversy has raised the political temperature in the country and, according political experts, it could result in a confrontation between the executive and the judiciary.
