Govt may rely on majority for controversial bill

ISLAMABAD: A much awaited standing committee report on a controversial bill seeking to tighten terrorism prosecution came to the National Assembly on Wednesday, indicating the government will press its house majority into action after a consensus remained elusive. But contrary to the government’s comfortable position in the 342-seat lower house, the Protection of Pakistan (Amendment) Bill, some of whose provisions like permission to shoot suspects at sight, secret trials and longer detentions, have aroused fears of opposition politicians and rights activists, could get stuck up in the opposition-controlled Senate. The standing committee on interior and narcotics control said in its report that it was with an “overwhelming majority” that its last meeting on Tuesday approved bill with some of its own amendments. The bill, referred to it on Jan 30, seeks to turn a presidential ordinance into permanent law, which amends the original Protection of Pakistan Ordinance of 2013. The amending ordinance is already in force and it was for fear of its uncertain fate in parliament that the government got its extension for a second period of 90 days through a vote of the National Assembly during its previous session. The opposition leader in the house, Khursheed Ahmed Shah, had then advised the government to try for consensus on the bill to ensure its passage also by the 104-seat Senate, where his Pakistan People’s Party and its allies form the majority. But his counsel that a consensus in the National Assembly would reflect in the Senate lost much credibility after some PPP senators and their allies blocked another government bill that was passed by the lower house with PPP support to pave the way for the appointment of a consensus chief election commissioner. Wednesday’s standing committee report, recommending that the lower house pass the bill with some amendments proposed by it, included a dissenting note from two members of the opposition Muttahida Qaumi Movement, but none from the main opposition parties like the PPP and Pakistan Tehrik-i-Insaf. But even without giving a dissenting note, the government-allied Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam-F thought it fit to embarrass the government when one of its senior members, Maulana Amir Zaman, declared his party’s continued opposition to the bill if its concerns about what he called “anti-people” clauses were not removed. More protests were in store for the government in the form of walkouts by the MQM and usually pro-government lawmakers from the Federally Administered Tribal Areas before the house was adjourned for a previously unscheduled recess for Thursday until 10.30am on Friday. That recess was an apparent concession to the PPP to facilitate its members’ travel to the mausoleum of their party founder, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, at Naudero, Sindh, to mark the 35th anniversary of his April 4, 1079, execution after a controversial conspiracy-to-murder conviction. Seven MQM members present at the time walked out of the house quite early in the day, and did not return for the remainder of the sitting, to protest against what one of them, Asif Hasnain, called a continuing appearance of mutilated corpses of his party’s followers in Karachi over the past 10 days. He urged the president, the prime minister and the chief justice to take notice of what he described as “extrajudicial murders” by police and unspecified intelligence agencies. The walkout by six Fata members came after one of them, Shahji Gul Afridi, shouted at the top of his voice his complaint that the government had “done nothing” for the good of the militancy-plagued Fata during nine months of its rule and that Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif had not even granted their request for a meeting with him. Mr Afridi threatened that the Fata members would continue protesting until a commission was set up to redress “these reservations” as he waved a paper without revealing its contents. NO RESPONSE: There was no immediate government response to some important questions raised by opposition members. One was from Nafisa Shah, a PPP member from Sindh, over a government decision to allow some of what were formerly known as Rental Power Projects (RPPs) under the new name of Short-Term Independent Power Projects in a perceived disregard of Supreme Court orders that had disallowed all RPPs after corruption charges were brought against two prime ministers of the previous PPP-led coalition government, mainly by then opposition member, and now Water and Power Minister, Khwaja Mohammad Asif. Khwaja Asif was not in the house at the time when Ms Shah demanded a government explanation about what she called its “hypocritical” move through a decision taken last week by the Economic Coordination Committee of the cabinet. Another PPP member from Sindh, Imran Zafar Leghari, too got no reply to his query about whether the government’s negotiating team engaged in peace talks with Taliban rebels had demanded release of their abducted civilian captives like Ali Haider Gilani, a son of former PPP prime minister Yousuf Raza Gilani, and Shahbaz Taseer, a son of assassinated Punjab governor Salman Taseer, also of the PPP. Minister of State for National Health Services, Regulation and Coordination, Saira Afzal Tarar, assured the house that the government would bring a new law to parliament to restrict increases in drug prices and set up, by the end of the year, a drug regulatory authority. She made the statement while denying a reported 30 per cent increase in the prices of 179 life-saving drugs over the last few months as claimed in a call-attention notice of five PPP members, and blamed what she acknowledged as up to 15pc price increases on court stay orders obtained by some pharmaceutical companies and said the government was seeking to get them vacated by the Supreme Court.