ISLAMABAD, Oct 30: Dismissing doubts of critics, the government assured the Senate on Thursday it would not waver in its aim to undo the controversial 17th Amendment to the Constitution to curtail presidential powers, as it faced a last-minute opposition assault before the house was prorogued after a seven-day session.

The assurance came halfway through the sitting from Leader of the House Raza Rabbani, who also renewed the PPP-led coalition’s commitment to the famous Charter of Democracy political roadmap signed in 2006 by assassinated PPP leader Benazir Bhutto and Pakistan Muslim League-N leader Nawaz Sharif.

“There is no wavering on the (question of) 17th Amendment,” Mr Rabbani said and told the house that National Assembly Speaker Fehmida Mirza would soon constitute an all-parties committee, as suggested by President Asif Ali Zardari in his address to a joint sitting of both houses of parliament last month, to “revisit” the 2004 amendment which legitimised the sweeping powers assumed by former military president Pervez Musharraf and his other decrees.

But only four days before the first anniversary of then Gen Musharraf’s controversial Nov 3, 2007, emergency proclamation under which he sacked about 60 judges of superior courts, there was no reiteration, or even a mention, from the treasury benches of the government’s oft-repeated assurances for the reinstatement of all the deposed judges.

After a period of congeniality that generally marked the proceedings since the start of the session on Oct 24, outbursts of opposition leader Kamil Ali Agha and his young, loud-spoken Pakistan Muslim League-Q colleague Jamal Khan Leghari, mainly about the government’s plans to seek an International Monetary Fund loan to meet the present economic crisis, aroused strong responses from Information and Broadcasting Minister Sherry Rehman of the PPP and Housing Minister Rehmatullah Kakar of coalition ally Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam.

Ms Rehman, who spoke just before Chairman Mohammedmian Soomro read out the presidential order proroguing the house, seemed annoyed by what she called a “heap of accusations” from Mr Leghari, a son of former president Farooq Ahmed Khan Leghari, and said her party would save the “broken boat” of the country in the present crisis in the same way as it had “saved Pakistan in the past with its blood”.

She blamed the previous PML-Q government for the present economic difficulties and the food and power shortages but said “it is now our responsibility to save the broken boat”.

While assuring the house that the PPP would make sacrifices as it did in the past, the minister complained of “ungratefulness” of unspecified people in what appeared to be a reference to the sacking of Ms Bhutto’s second government in November 1996 by her own handpicked then president Leghari.

Mr Kakar promised transparency of government decisions if it had to take the IMF package or sell stakes in the National Bank of Pakistan or the Qadirpur gas field, all of which Mr Agha wanted to be brought to parliament for prior approval.

But he rejected charges that the present government was responsible for a sharp slide in the country’s foreign exchange reserves, which he said were artificially shown higher by withholding due payments, including some to Saudi Arabia for its supply of oil on deferred payments.

He said the present government was once confronted with a $6 billion bill of such dues by the Saudi government, but he did not say whether this amount had been paid.

PPP’s Senator Enver Baig found it depressing for Pakistan to have to go to the IMF while its friends were not forthcoming and proposed that, to “stand on our own feet”, the government exploit its connections with rulers in the Middle East, particularly in the Gulf, to have the country’s manpower employed there rather than ask for cash. Such a course, he said, could double foreign annual remittances to $12 billion.

Speaking in the inconclusive debate on the Sept 20 presidential address to parliament, which will be carried to the next session, he asked all politicians, the military leadership and civil servants to be “honest to the nation,” otherwise, he said: “We will be doomed”.

PML-Q’s Salim Saifullah wondered about a coalition’s right to rule when it could not complete its cabinet, demanded extension of the Political Parties Act to the Fata and offered his party’s support if the government brought constitutional amendments to undo the 17th Amendment or the Article 58(2)b that empowers the president to dissolve the National Assembly.