ISLAMABAD, Aug 19: On Pakistan’s first day without Pervez Musharraf’s presidency, his foes in the National Assembly on Tuesday called for denying him a “safe exit” and putting him on trial as the ruling coalition pondered over reinstating judges he had deposed and finding a democratic successor of a disgraced former dictator.

In the face of severe criticism for his alleged violations of the Constitution and victimisation of political opponents, some of his loyalists from the formerly ruling Pakistan Muslim League-Q (PML-Q) had words of praise for the last of the country’s four military rulers and urged his critics to forget and forgive and better concentrate on tackling grave problems such as law and order, inflation and food and energy shortages.

But the Karachi-based Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), an erstwhile key Musharraf ally, maintained a meaningful silence for the second day of an inconclusive debate and some of its members opposed any further talk on the issue at the cost of other business of the house after Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani had spoken on it on Monday night.

Several members lambasted a farewell military guard of honour presented to the ex-president after he announced resigning from his office to escape the humiliation of impeachment planned by the ruling coalition led by the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) and saw it as a sign of possible moves to save him from paying for usurpation of power in violation of the Constitution since his Oct 12, 1999 coup and other alleged misdeeds, including his role in the alleged murder and disappearance of thousands of people.

Even before the debate was adjourned until 5pm on Wednesday, there was talk in parliament lobbies that it might be within hours that the top coalition leaders’ meeting in Islamabad would announce the time for the promised reinstatement of about 60 judges of the Supreme Court and the four provincial high courts who were sacked under a controversial Nov 3, 2007 emergency proclamation by then-president Musharraf in his capacity as army chief.

Law and Parliamentary Affairs Minister Farooq H. Naek, often accused in the past of playing delaying tactics on the issue, told the media outside the house the decision would come “today”.

But Information and Broadcasting Minister Sherry Rehman was more cautious, saying the issue needed consultation among the coalition partners, who later put it off until Friday as their jubilant mood was interrupted by the shocking report of a suspected suicide bomb attack at a hospital in Dera Ismail Khan that killed more than 30 people.

During the debate, most of the harsh anti-Musharraf criticism came from the PPP’s main coalition ally, the Pakistan Muslim League-N (PML-N), though some from the PPP too did not mince words despite an apparent party advice for restraint.

PPP chief whip and Labour and Manpower Minister Khurshid Ahmed Shah was seen engaged in a finger-pointing argument in a house aisle with a party back-bencher who called the ex-president a “rebel of Allah” deserving the capital punishment and asked all party member to raise their hands in support of his view and even called an apparently hesitant Interior Adviser Rehman Malik by name to do the same.

Culture and Youth Affairs Minister Saad Rafiq said his PML-N would not become a party to “any attempt to give indemnity to Musharraf’s black deeds” because “unless one military adventurer was punished another adventurer could topple democracy again tomorrow”.

PML-N’s Sahibzada Fazal Karim said a dictator “who was not ready to give way to anyone until yesterday … should be punished under article 6 (of the Constitution providing the death penalty for treason) instead of giving him a safe passage”.

Another PML-N member, Khurram Dastagir, said though Musharraf’s alleged crimes like selling out Pakistan’s sovereignty, “blood of the Pakistani people and the Kashmiri people’s struggle as well as making Pakistan’s economy hostage to international institutions, there was need for a mechanism to make him admit his crimes before a South Africa-type truth and reconciliation commission.

But PML-Q activist Ms Donya Aziz said her party’s patron had “left with a lot of dignity and grace” and “in the interest of the country”. Pleading for a policy of let bygones be bygones, she asked the coalition government to move forward to tackle the enormous problems it was faced with.

Her senior party colleague Atiya Inayatullah described Musharraf’s departure as “a military ruler becoming a political martyr for the first time” although she invited cries of “shame, shame” from the treasury benches.