Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan informed the house that his party has ended its boycott of the house business advisory committee.—File photo

ISLAMABAD: At the height of a dry winter, the government and opposition warmed to each other at the start of a National Assembly session on Monday, with promises of cooperation in lawmaking and the largest opposition party ending a boycott of an agenda-setting advisory committee.

Even some of the government’s unruly allies seemed to be pacified, for now, providing a relative comfort for the nearly three-year-old ruling coalition after weeks of tensions over a controversial sales tax reform law and the sacking of two ministers for engaging in public recrimination over alleged corruption by government functionaries in arranging accommodation for Pakistani Haj pilgrims in Saudi Arabia last month.

The Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam of Maulana Fazlur Rehman was yet to have its members’ seats shifted to opposition side from the treasury benches to follow up its decision last week to quit the ruling alliance and it seemed business as usual at the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) benches after a party delegation met President Asif Ali Zardari to sort out their anger with the ruling Pakistan People’s Party (PPP).

Leader of the opposition Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan informed the house that his party, the Pakistan Muslim League-N (PML-N), had ended its boycott of the house business advisory committee — which began in the last session in November — on the condition the body’s decisions are implemented.

Syed Khurshid Ahmed Shah, the chief whip of the PPP and the minister for labour and manpower, responded with assurances of taking the opposition into confidence in law-making and said the government would not bring the new Sales Tax Bill, which has already passed the stage of consideration by the Senate which formulated its non-binding recommendations last month, until an “understanding” was reached on it.

Both the JUI and the MQM had put the government in hell of a spot by opposing the key bill along with opposition parties in the Senate and vowed to do the same in the lower house, to frustrate the adoption of the draft, which seeks to end what the government thinks undue exemptions given to influential classes although reducing the GST to a uniform rate of 15 per cent from the existing ones ranging from 17 to 25, besides introducing documentation of transactions to meet conditions of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund for their aid flows.

But tensions heightened after the PPP’s Sindh Home Minister, Zulfikar Ali Mirza, blamed most of the recent wave of target killings in Karachi on MQM followers and Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani sacked the JUI’s Science and Technology Minister, Senator Mohammad Azam Swati, along with the PPP’s Minister for Religious Affairs, Syed Hamid Saeed Kazmi, for violating his directive against airing accusations against each other in public.

Neither the JUI chief, who is also chairman of a special parliamentary committee on Kashmir, nor two of the party’s remaining ministers came to the house on Monday but some party members showed to reporters identical letters addressed to National Assembly Speaker Fehmida Mirza and Senate Chairman Farooq H. Naek seeking allotment of opposition seats to the party’s members in both houses.

But the letter to Speaker Mirza had not been delivered to the National Assembly secretariat until Deputy Speaker Faisal Karim Kundi, who conducted the day’s proceedings, adjourned the house around 2pm until 4pm on Tuesday.

At least one of eight JUI members in the National Assembly, Laiq Mohammad Khan, remained present in the house seated in the ninth row of ruling coalition benches and nobody raised the issue of seats.

Chaudhry Nisar blamed the embarrassment faced by the government from its allies on what he called its failure to consult the opposition before tabling the GST Bill but refrained from praising their attitude – an indication the presence of the JUI, or of the MQM if the volatile party has another quarrel with the government, might not be very welcome on opposition benches.

As part of a conciliatory atmosphere in the house on Monday, a day after both houses of parliament met in a joint sitting to be addressed by visiting Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, Law and Parliamentary Affairs Minister Babar Awan agreed to a demand by some PML-N members and one PPP member to defer, for the improvement of its language, a government bill seeking to amend the Registration Act of 1908 to provide for the scrutiny and verification of every document to be registered under that law by “at least one advocate who is duly enrolled with a bar council in accordance with the Legal Practitioners and Bar Councils Act, 1973”.

Chaudhry Nisar asked the government to take the house into confidence over important foreign policy matters such as its response to a recently reported statement by US Joint Chief of Staff chairman Admiral Mike Mullen complaining over Pakistan’s failure to start an anti-militant military operation in the North Waziristan tribal area and reported comments of US ambassador to Pakistan to an MQM delegation advising the party to support the GST Bill and to internal matters such as the alleged corruption in Haj arrangements and the sacking of the two ministers – calling the last-mentioned action a “positive” beginning.

But he reserved his harshest criticism for the alleged illegal acts the country’s intelligence agencies like picking up civilians without a legal process and said: “This country cannot make progress until these agencies are brought into confines of law.”

While Mr Khursheed Shah promised to make arrangements more transparent for the next Haj as the religious affairs portfolio was now held by him, Interior Minister Rehman Malik, in a high-sounding speech, called for the formation of a house committee to formulate a standard operating procedure setting guidelines for Pakistani politicians for meeting foreign diplomats as a means to check foreign interference as he complained that these diplomats often meet the politicians without seeking permission from the foreign ministry on the ground that they cited invitations of politicians for such visits to them.

The house earlier admitted three adjournment motions from opposition members seeking to debate increases in prices of electricity, petroleum products and other essential commodities, for which the deputy speaker said two hours would be fixed later.

Minister of State for Industries and Production Ayatullah Durrani, while responding to an opposition call-attention notice about what it called “increase in the prices of ghee, oil and other essential commodities at state-run utility stores, said a further reduction could be made in sugar prices next week if permitted by international market situation and credited long lines of people outside such stores as an evidence of good quality of items they offered.