Qazi Hussain Ahmad said on Saturday he had decided to resign from National Assembly. The MNA has not actually turned in the resignation to Speaker Amir Hussain, but said he would wait for the day on which the National Assembly would be convened, and then place the resignation in the hands of the Speaker.
Till such time as he hands over the resignation, which would take some while, he would continue to remain National Assembly Member. Qazi told news channels that the decision to resign was his own, and not of the Jamaat-i-Islami, the party he heads. "No one from the JI is resigning," he told the media persons.
Three months ago, his party had 'decided' to resign en masse to stop President Musharraf from seeking second term election from Parliament, but the 'party' never quite got to doing it, for pragmatic reasons. For this, the party received ridicule for taking a hard position and then sitting quiet. In fact, the London multiparty conference (MPC) under Nawaz Sharif took similar decision, asking opposition party members to resign their parliamentary seats. Qazi endorsed such a move.
Fazlur Rahman, his parliamentary colleague and Leader of Opposition in NA, also belonging to the same conglomerate of religious parties--the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal (MMA)--disagreed. Fazl said he felt that such a move by Members of Parliament might be construed by President Musharraf that the House was not complete and he might decide to extend the tenure of the National Assembly for another year, or for some such time.
Amin Fahim, representing the PPP in the MPC, favoured putting on hold the resignation decision until a 'suitable time', but he is in support for waging a struggle against re-election of President Musharraf, as well as for democracy rein in.
The PPP position caused division within MPC and the PPP even now maintains that it would remain in consultation with Nawaz on this issue. However, in recent days Benazir Bhutto seems to be getting closer to President Musharraf. That, however, is no confirmation that she has made a deal with him. Her PPP members deny such an eventuality.
These happenings reflect division within the Opposition. The lone decision of Qazi to resign his seat accentuates the division within the body politic and among those who value the place of religion in politics and others more secular.
The result is evident in 34 militancy incidents in the country since 2002. The horrid incident taking place at Miranshah on Saturday took the lives of 18 soldiers in a car bomb suicide attack was an example of that militancy, of which the Lal Masjid tragedy is a turbulent face of the national psyche.
This was the second attack on security forces in NWFP on Saturday. "Two security officials were wounded in an earlier blast near the town of Bannu in North West Frontier Province," one report said.
Reflecting on the news of Qazi's resignation, a political analyst said he would wait until the NA session, but his resignation comes in the backdrop of the MPC, where, according to that analyst, the JI received a little less spotlight. He thought the prime motivation for the resignation could be the Jamia Hafsa tragedy.