ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani told the National Assembly on Monday his coalition was still reviewing the controversial National Reconciliation Ordinance (NRO) after an opposition uproar and walkout to protest against government plans to seek parliamentary approval for former president Pervez Musharraf’s decree as a bill.

Bitter rivals PML-N and PML-Q joined hands for the first time in the 19-month-old lower house to put pressure on the PPP-led government not to seek parliamentary approval of the decree that actually gave birth to the present democratic system and led to the end of nine-year rule of the giver of what critics see as a vehicle to legitimise corruption.

'Consultations about the NRO are continuing … and our parliamentary party is meeting today to review the issue,' Mr Gilani said just as members of the two main opposition parties stormed out of the house led by opposition leader Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan after a furore that also saw them engaging in a noisy clash with Speaker Fehmida Mirza after she rebuked them for repeatedly chanting 'NRO namanzoor (unacceptable)'.

The prime minister said he would continue his policy of seeking a consensus on major issues and 'God-willing convince the opposition too'.

His remarks, amid apparent wavering of some key government allies, seemed to cast a shadow about the fate of a draft bill approved by a house standing committee with some amendments to the original Oct 5, 2007, decree, which provided for the withdrawal of criminal cases registered against holders of public office for political reasons or victimisation between January 1986 and General Musharraf’s Oct 12, 1999 coup.

The prime minister said he wanted to assure the nation that his government would not compromise the interest of democracy and the country 'for which we made many sacrifices', and added: 'We want to maintain this system, we will not let this system to be derailed.'

He also seemed to contradict speculation about the possible parting of ways by coalition partner Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) over the NRO issue and said: 'God-willing we all will be together.'

In brief remarks, PPP chief whip and Labour and Manpower Minister Khurshid Ahmed Shah, whom the PML-N members had earlier refused to listen to, said the government would not do anything that harmed the sanctity of the house.

The bill on NRO was not on the agenda on the first day of the assembly’s winter session, but it turned out to be main topic after the opposition leader lambasted what he called a “notorious” decree of a dictator, which had facilitated the return of assassinated former prime minister Benazir Bhutto from self-exile in October 2007 and the subsequent elections resulting in the present governments in the centre and in the four provinces.

The NRO was one among 37 of General Musharraf’s ordinances about which the Supreme Court, in a July 31 ruling, had given the government 120 days for parliamentary approval while nullifying his controversial Nov 3, 2007 emergency proclamation and constitutional protection under it to these decrees. That deadline runs out on Nov 28.

The opposition leader, in his speech made earlier on a point of order, accused the government of 'steamrolling' the bill through the 17-member standing committee on law and justice whose last session was boycotted by his party in protest and demanded that the draft be sent back to the committee for a review.

Despite his strongly-worded speech – accusing the government of using parliament as rubber-stamp, trying to run the country according to its whims and 'immobilising all institutions' in its own interest – the PML-N leader seemed to leave room for possible cooperation with the government of which his party had been a part for some months after its formation in March 2008.

'If there can be an improvement with the framework of law, we can cooperate but … cannot rubber-stamp,' said Chaudhry Nisar Ali, who also ruled out his party becoming 'a tool of any undemocratic force'.

Left-handed compliment

PML-Q leader Chaudhry Pervez Elahi, who had once vowed as the Punjab province chief minister to get General Musharraf elected president 'ten times' in army uniform, received a left-handed compliment from the lawmakers of the ruling Pakistan People’s Party who repeatedly thumped their desks when he lambasted his former mentor’s decree as a 'black law' that will bring Pakistan worldwide ridicule, put the oppressor and the oppressed on the same footing and validate crime.

A PPP woman activist sitting in a visitors’ gallery was ordered by the chair to leave the house after she made a remark during Mr Elahi’s speech and provoked protests from the opposition benches.

The speaker herself withdrew one of her own remarks about the opposition slogan-chanting to which the PML-N had taken offence, but also expunged a remark of the opposition leader from the record of the proceedings after objections from some PPP members. On a request from Parliamentary Affairs Minister Babar Awan, the speaker agreed to put off, owing to opposition’s absence, some legislative business on the agenda before adjourning the house until 10am on Tuesday.