Hectic background efforts over the weekend augured well for the government as it succeeded on Monday to introduce in the National Assembly a bill to amend the 'controversial' Hudood Ordinance-a move that sharply achieved its prime objective of dividing the opposition on ideological grounds ahead of the no-trust motion.
With the Pakistan People's Party Parliamentarians (PPPP) decided to go along with the government to form a 'broad-based select' committee of the house to deliberate upon the bill, the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal (MMA) and the Pakistan Muslim League (PML-N) resorted to a strong protest against the proposed legislation and vowed to block it tooth and nail.
Angry clerics of the MMA besieged the speaker's dais moments after the bill was introduced, and before staging a walkout, chanted full-throated slogans against President General Pervez Musharraf and in favour of Hudood Ordinance-a 1979 legislation they perceived an Islamic set of laws.
They torn copies of the bill into pieces in the presence of Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz, who was earlier greeted with slogans of 'resign' when he made his maiden appearance during the current session wherein the opposition had bluntly criticised him for alleged corruption in the scraped Pakistan Steel Mills (PSM) privatisation deal.
But Shaukat Aziz remained in the house till the end and himself spearheaded the government defence against the opposition onslaught on the bill.
Unlike on Friday where the opposition walkout had triggered a quorum problem, which forced the government to defer the introduction of the bill, their protest on Monday, however, could not make any difference as speaker Chaudhry Amir Hussain went ahead with the formation of the proposed select committee with the blessing of the PPPP.
A committee will now be formed to debate various clauses of the bill. It, however, was not clear whether the MMA and PML-N would join the committee.
Many treasury and opposition members had verbal clashes after MMA lawmakers torn apart copies of the bill and ruling coalition legislators termed it an insult both to Islam and the parliament.
Opposition leader Maulana Fazlur Rehman said Pakistan Muslim League president Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain rang him Sunday morning and admitted he himself was not satisfied with the proposed legislation-a charge Shujaat promptly denied.
As soon as law minister Wasi Zafar introduced the bill, Maulana Fazl stood up and said the government wanted to enact a 'one-sided' law to please the west and vowed the religious alliance would never let it do so.
He proposed, first both the Council of Islamic Ideology (CII) and the Federal Sharia Court should be restructured and the bill then be referred to both the institutions to weigh it against Islamic injunctions.
"It will be an un-Islamic law...I reject it on the floor of the house. We (MMA) will use all of our energies to block it. We will never let the government to make a mockery of the holy Quran and Sunnah," he said.
He went on to say, "It is a conspiracy to divide the combined opposition; to weaken its no-trust motion against the Prime Minister."
PML-N Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan fully backed the MMA's stance and said the government had resorted to an 'unholy haste' by bringing this 'sensitive bill'.
Nisar proposed formation of a committee that should also have members from the CII and all political parties but made it clear no clause of the bill should be against Islamic norms.
But PPPP lawmakers looked to have different idea. They decided to go along with the government and favoured the formation of a select committee.
The speaker has convened all political parties on Tuesday before the start of the session to finalise nominees for the committee.