ISLAMABAD, Oct 5: Nearly eight months out of government, former foreign minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi electrified a National Assembly debate on power cuts on Wednesday by declaring a “revolt” against PPP leadership, which appeared to ignore his warning of a grass-root wrath as it tried to fix problems with some allies.

It turned out as a day of PPP dissidents that the opposition PML-N used to energise the third day of its protests, marked by two walkouts and a noisy uproar, despite assurances by Water and Power Minister Naveed Qamar that electricity loadshedding had been eased off with the addition of 3,000 megawatts to the national grid after the government paid Rs11 billion arrears to two private power companies and that 2,000MW more would be added in the next two days.

Mr Qureshi used his turn to speak on the third day of the debate to praise the Sept 29 all-party conference (APC) convened by Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani, calling it a message of national unity against allegations from the United States and Afghanistan, which Pakistan rejects, of complicity of the country's top spy agency, ISI, with the Afghan Taliban rebels. But he said the government did not seem serious to implement a 13-point resolution adopted by the gathering because of unspecified “elements and people in key position” who he said gave precedence to their own interests over national interests.

And then he turned his guns against the PPP leadership, naming the prime minister for not inviting him to a meeting he held in the former minister's constituency in Multan on Monday and fearing gerrymandering of the constituency for the next election -- but spared President Asif Ali Zardari an attack by name -- and said: “If this is politics, then I am raising the flag of revolt against this politics. …On a principle, I will challenge (you), I will challenge.”

Mr Qureshi's critical remarks were greeted with desk-thumping cheers from his one-time party colleagues in the PML-N and some apparently estranged PPP members, but also with some protesting murmurs from PPP benches and repeated reminders to him from PPP's Yasmeen Rehman, who was chairing the sitting at the time, to stick to the topic of the debate.

Prime Minister Gilani just looked back from his front-row desk as his former cabinet member was accusing the government of “mis-governance” and corruption and later left the house without giving any response.

But the prime minister seemed confident, apparently knowing about President Zardari's perceived success in ironing out reported differences with the government-allied PML-Q at a meeting with the party leaders and persuading the Karachi-based Muttahida Qaumi Movement to rejoin the cabinet it had quit in January.

Even the water and power minister, who took the floor immediately after Mr Qureshi to explain the government's latest moves that he said would “eliminate loadshedding to a great extent” or reduce it to a “limited level”, avoided responding to his former cabinet colleague, who informed the house of what he called concern he heard from diplomats at an overnight German embassy reception in Islamabad about the present government being “unable to deliver, incapable of delivering on both international and internal fronts”.

Addressing the PPP leadership, Mr Qureshi said PPP's “grass-root worker” had become “fed up and unconcerned with you” because of what he called a sell-out of the party's ideological basis and added: “When the time comes he will not support you.”

Earlier, leader of opposition Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan interrupted the debate after PPP's Farahnaz Ispahani had objected to what she saw as a parochial approach by PML-N complaining about power cuts only in Punjab, and protested against what he called a “tamasha” (spectacle) of government non-seriousness and then led a walkout by his party to sit with PPP's dissident lawmaker Nasir Ali Shah from Quetta, who was holding a sit-in outside the parliament house for the second day to protest against Tuesday's killing of 13 Hazara Shias by unknown gunmen in the Balochistan capital.

The PML-N members returned to the house after some time and staged the second walkout over the same cause as well as against loadshedding -- not to return until the house adjourned until 10am on Thursday -- after a furore and slogan-chanting by them during a most bitter and rhetorical speech by their colleague Chaudhry Mohammad Barjees Tahir, some of whose remarks were ordered expunged by the chair.

PPP's Fauzia Wahab, whose was the main speech of the day from the treasury benches to defend government policies against repeated PML-N attacks, took PML-N chief Nawaz Sharif to task for reportedly speaking of what he called “Zardari network” being more dangerous for the country than the “Haqqani network” of Afghan Taliban and said these remarks to reporters in Bahawalpur on Tuesday only betrayed his party's affinity with a group that did not recognise the existence of Pakistan and a disregard for a leader elected to the country's highest office.

She called the huge circular debt as the main stumbling block to resolving the power crisis which, she said, needed an “out-of-the-box solution” rather than violent agitation, for which she blamed the PML-N.

Amid opposition onslaughts on alleged government inefficiency or corruption, former interior minister Aftab Ahmad Khan Sherpao of the opposition PPP-S had some praise for the remedial measures announced by the water and power minister, saying it could not be better in the given situation, though he demanded an apology from the prime minister for his government's “negligence” and ridiculed some government partners for not owning responsibility for the situation.

PPP veteran Chaudhry Abdul Ghafoor suggested allocating bulk power supplies to provinces for distribution and fund collection by them as a solution.