ISLAMABAD, April 8 With a rare unanimity that made a parliamentary revolution, the National Assembly on Thursday passed landmark constitutional reforms aimed to restore a genuine parliamentary system in the country.

All 292 members present finally voted for the Constitution (Eighteenth Amendment) Bill drafted by an all-party parliamentary committee after separate positive votes cast for each of its 102 clauses ranged between 255 and 289.

This was much more than the required 228 votes, or two-thirds majority of the 342-seat house, thanks to a broad consensus of political parties, though a clause changing the name of the North-West Frontier Province to Khyber Pakhtunkhwa produced some fireworks and a mini-mutiny in the main opposition party, the PML-N.

While three seats of the house are vacant, the vote showed 47 members were absent from the sitting.

The bill, which, besides other changes, seeks to transfer some key presidential powers to parliament, enhance provincial autonomy and repeal the controversial Musharraf-era 17th Amendment, will now go to the 100-seat Senate, which too must pass it with a two-thirds majority before it is signed by President Asif Ali Zardari to be put into effect.

Loud cheers rang out in the house repeatedly during the lengthy clause-by-clause voting, which required members to stand up 102 times to show their support or opposition to a clause, and when Speaker Fehmida Mirza announced the 292-0 result of the final vote through division, in which members record their votes in a register.

Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani hailed the house unanimity on the most important constitutional amendments since the adoption of the original Constitution in 1973 as fruit of the PPP-led coalition government's reconciliation policy, while the Leader of the Opposition, Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan, called it a “win-win situation” for Pakistan.

Messages of congratulations to the house and the nation soon came also from President Asif Ali Zardari and PML-N leader Nawaz Sharif, for both of whom the prime minister voiced his special thanks for their role in bringing about this change.

Inside a jubilant house, passage of clauses removing the name of former military president Ziaul Haq from the Constitution and repealing the 17th Amendment and the Concurrent Legislative List produced the loudest and longest desk-thumping with PPP, PML-N and MQM members chanting slogans of “jiay Bhutto”, “Jiay Nawaz Sharif” and “jiay Altaf” for their leaders.

But there was only a subdued greeting for a clause that will repeal the Constitution's Article 58(2)b to deprive the presidency of discretionary powers to dissolve the National Assembly and appoint armed forces' chiefs and provincial governors that were arbitrarily assumed by previous military president Pervez Musharraf.

Five amendments to the bill moved by PML-Q members, including one against the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa name for the NWFP and another against the repeal of the Concurrent List, were rejected, but the one on the new provincial name was marked by some sentimental speeches from its sponsors and a protest walkout by three PML-N members in violation of the policy of their party, which itself had proposed the new name as a compromise on the original Pakhtunkhwa demanded by the ANP.

The three men -- former NWFP chief minister Sardar Mehtab Ahmad Khan, Capt (retd) Mohammad Safdar, a son-in-law of Nawaz Sharif (both belonging to NWFP's Hazara division) and Sahibzada Fazal Karim from Punjab -- first did not stand in support of the amendment with other party members and later, when the chair called up the opponents of the clause to stand up, walked out of the house in an obvious protest against the new name.

Although there is no legal penalty for such a violation of party discipline, the protest was an embarrassment for the PML-N.

However, the three members later voted for the bill as a whole.

“This is an achievement of our reconciliation policy,” Prime Minister Gilani said about the vote, and described the amendments as realisation of the visions of Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah, the late PPP leaders Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and Benazir Bhutto, Mr Sharif who signed the Charter of Democracy with Ms Bhutto as well as the entire political leadership of the country to make the supremacy of parliament possible.But he said it was not the end of the road and promised his government would be prepared to bring more changes if it received similar support in the future.

“We are not thinking of power, we are thinking about our future generations who could say that (people's) representatives of today have given a direction to the nation,” Mr Gilani said.

He said the amendments would restore a “truly parliamentary system” in the country on the Westminster model that he said was closest to the thinking of the Quaid-i-Azam and the late Mr Bhutto and best suited to this region, while the one being replaced and given by dictators was a hotchpotch, neither parliamentary nor presidential.

Opposition leader Nisar Ali Khan indirectly lauded President Zardari's role in bringing about the amendments as PPP leader and said the bill's approval showed the country's politicians could rise above party politics and take decisions.

He said he felt proud as a member of this parliament and assured the government of opposition's full support in matters such as solving people's problems and ridding the country of the “legacy of military dictators” and foreign dictation.

The opposition leader also appealed to all politicians to make a commitment never to lend a helping shoulder to any military dictator and repeated his demand for the trial of Gen Musharraf for high treason.

More parties' leaders wanted to speak but the speaker said she would allow them time on Friday.