ISLAMABAD: In a rebuff to noisy protests from the main opposition party, the remainder majorities of both houses of parliament on Thursday placed their “complete confidence” in Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani. The National Assembly also demanded a new province of south Punjab.

The show of support for the embattled prime minister and the first formal parliamentary demand for the creation of Pakistan’s fifth province came in two resolutions passed by a tumultuous National Assembly in the morning while a much calmer Senate in the evening only passed the first resolution.

The move in the National Assembly, where the resolutions were moved by Law and Justice Minister Farooq H. Naek, came amid some rowdy scenes, climaxing to some fist-flinging after nearly an hour of PML-N slogan-chanting, desk-thumping and booing as part of a party campaign against the prime minister.

But in the Senate, where the PML-N senators only staged a protest walkout, the passage of identical resolution for reposing the confidence in the prime minister moved by the leader of house, Senator Jahangir Badar of PPP, remained a smooth affair.

After the vote in the National Assembly, just before the adjournment of the house until 10am on Friday, a PPP member and one from a group of PML-N protesters blocking a row of ministerial benches were seen throwing punches at each other like boxers, though none of them seemed to have been hit, before other colleagues separated the two men.

The PML-N chanting of slogans and insults in the National Assembly, dominated by “go Gilani, go” call, began much before the proceedings started late by more than two hours and continued through a curtailed question hour, in defiance of repeated calls from Speaker Fehmida Mirza to keep order.

There was some paper-tearing and display of placards bearing anti-Gilani slogans, as had happened in two previous sittings on Monday and Wednesday, but not as much litter was left this time by the protesters, who moved around in front of the stage or crowded the prime minister’s desk in his absence, chanting slogans in Urdu, Punjabi and English languages punctuated by booing like “ha, ha, hoo”. Opposition leader Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan did not join the active crowd but watched their performance from a distant back bench.

To read out the two resolutions, Mr Naek had to come to a second-row seat of the treasury benches from his own seat in the front row that was blocked by protesters and seemed going through a vocal struggle in order to be heard – which he was not in the galleries though house members using headphones of their desk appeared to be understanding the texts that they cheered with desk-thumping of their own and voting “ayes” for them.

The reaffirmation of confidence in the prime minister was a parliamentary response to the PML-N demand that he resign because of his conviction for contempt of court last week by a seven-judge Supreme Court bench for not implementing an earlier court order to write to Swiss authorities to reopen disputed money-laundering charges against President Asif Ali Zardari as well as to back his argument that he had only upheld a constitutional immunity the president has against prosecution at home or abroad while in office.

Though the demand for a new province carries no legal force, it seemed aimed at giving a political momentum to a pledge by the PPP and its coalition allies to carve out a province in Seraiki-speaking southern Punjab ahead of the next general election, though the resolution’s English-language text proposes its name as “Janoobi (southern) Punjab” rather than the originally envisioned Seraiki province.

That name could be acceptable, at some stage, also to the PML-N, which heads the Punjab provincial government as the largest single party in the provincial assembly and whose leaders have said in the past they are not opposed to creating new provinces on administrative, rather than linguistic, grounds.

“This house reposes complete confidence in Prime Minister Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani as the constitutionally and democratically elected prime minister and unanimously elected chief executive of this country,” said one resolution, recalling his election by a big majority of the 342-seat National Assembly in March 2008 and a subsequent unanimous vote of confidence by the same house.

The prime minister says he will not resign before exhausting the legal option of an appeal to a larger bench after receiving a detailed judgement -- though he had already completed the symbolic sentence of “imprisonment till the rising of the court” when a short order was issued on April 26 – as well as a constitutional remedy of a ruling by National Assembly Speaker Fehmida Mirza on whether or not a question of his disqualification had arisen because of the conviction.

The resolution commended the prime minister for “upholding the majesty of law by personally appearing thrice on being summoned by the Supreme Court and showing great humility and respect to the apex court”.

It also appreciated what it called “the firmness and dignity” he displayed “in upholding the constitution and parliamentary democracy in the country” and said: “This house also wishes to reaffirm its belief in the constitutional procedure for the disqualification of a prime minister from holding the office and that any other procedure adopted will be considered as unconstitutional.”

The resolution on the new province said that “in order to address the grievances and to secure the political, administrative and economic interests of the people of southern region” of Punjab province and “to empower them in this regard, it has become expedient that a new province known as province of Janoobi Punjab be created from the present province of the Punjab”.

It called upon the Punjab provincial assembly to present a bill in that house “to amend the constitution in accordance with Article 239 (4) of the constitution of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, 1973, for passage which would have the effect of altering the limits of province of Punjab, thereby creating province of Janoobi Punjab”.

That article says: “A bill to amend the constitution which would have the effect of altering the limits of a province shall not be presented to the president for assent unless it has been passed by the provincial assembly of that province by the votes of not less than two-thirds of its total membership.”

The PPP had at one time promised to bring a constitutional amendment in parliament for the creation of a Seraiki province, but that did not come, though the issue got a new focus in recent speeches by President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani. Similar private bills proposed by lawmakers of the government-allied Muttahida Qaumi Movement and Pakistan Muslim League-Q have also remained pending for months.