LAHORE, Aug 8: Showing no trust in President Pervez Musharraf, the Punjab Assembly will ask him at its Monday sitting to seek vote of confidence afresh from his electoral college as well as request parliament to impeach him.

A draft of the resolution was being prepared by the treasury on Friday as Punjab legislators would lead their counterparts in three other provincial houses in the movement against the president.

Political observers say the move will have no legal effect as it is just meant to put moral pressure on Musharraf to quit.

The Punjab Assembly has also taken lead in voicing its concern at the Article 58(2)b of the Constitution, which empowers the president to dissolve parliament on his discretion, by unanimously urging the National Assembly to legislate for doing away with it.

Punjab Law Minister Rana Sanaullah Khan confirmed that the resolution was being drafted. He said they were still consulting on whether the request for impeaching the president should be made with parliament, the forum competent to do the job, or with the political leadership.

Earlier, the law minister told the house, which as usual met one and-a-half hours late, that the resolution would be tabled on Aug 11. “I’m disclosing it before time so that no member can complain that the move was so sudden that he/she could not oppose it,” he said, referring to opposition leader Chaudhry Zaheeruddin’s complaint that the resolution to abolish the Article 58(2)b was passed when he and some other PML-Q members were away from the house to offer Zohr prayers.

The ever-witty Sana immediately took the floor to request the chair, being held by Deputy Speaker Rana Mashhood, to confirm whether Zaheer had offered the prayer. The assembly record, he said, showed that he offered no prayer.

Raja Shaukat Bhatti, a PML-Q forward bloc member and mover of Thursday’s resolution, criticised Zaheer for saying that the opposition was deceived on the issue. He said the opposition leader had attended the business advisory committee meeting in which it was decided to move the resolution after the official business would be over.

Senior Minister Raja Riaz while sitting on treasury benches is acting like he is in the opposition. As instead of working to ensure, as should have been the concern of the government that the proceedings remained smooth and the house stuck to its official business, he would invite the opposition to futile debates of allegations and counter-allegations by recalling mistakes of the PML-Q government.

On Friday too, he reminded the house that the Q-League while in power had tabled a resolution to elect Musharraf as president in army uniform. On Friday, he said, they (PML-Q members) were embarrassed with their heads down.

It provoked the opposition to raise slogans of NRO and ‘Don’t weep like this’, a reference to the presidential reference that gave a clean chit to the PPP leaders for their alleged past corruption.

The PML-Q observed a token walkout for five minutes, protesting that the chair had not kept his promise of taking along the opposition in the house proceedings. When the protesters did not return after five minutes, Rana Sana suggested that the opposition might not have any watch and the chair should send a team for telling the time and bringing them back to the house.

Iqbal Channar, Rana Tanvir and Taiba Zameer were sent to bring the opposition members back.