January 2, 2003	Thursday	Shawwal 28, 1423

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PESHAWAR, Jan 1: The Frontier Assembly, concluding a debate on unemployment and price hike, opened a discussion on the controversial Legal Framework Order (LFO) and termed it an attack on the supremacy of the Constitution.

The third session, presided over by Speaker Bakht Jahan Khan, started here at the assembly hall on Wednesday.

The Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal (MMA), which was running an independent government in the NWFP, had been opposed to some clauses of the LFO which made Gen Pervez all powerful and above the elected parliament.

In this way, the MMA provincial government shared views of the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), Pakistan Muslim League (PML-N) and Awami National Party (ANP) on the issue.

Initiating the discussion, Abdul Akbar Khan of the PPP made an impressive presentation on the issue before the house. He said it had been a practice of the successive dictators to create a docile judiciary after staging coups. Making a retrospective look on the constitutional history of Pakistan, he said three dictators had ruled the country for 29 out of 55 years.

Ayub Khan was the only military dictator who had abrogated his own constitution (1962) and Yahya Khan ran the country through an LFO which was silent over the transferring of powers, he added.

He said Gen Ziaul Haq had suspended the Constitution and held it in abeyance to avoid the hardships confronted by Yahya Khan in 1971 while transferring powers to Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto. Gen Zia had also tampered with the Constitution, but he had to get his amendments endorsed by parliament, he added.

The PPP leader said Syed Zafar Ali Shah of the PML-N had filed a petition challenging the martial law, but, the Supreme Court, instead of providing him (Zafar) any relief, had let the dictator to amend the Constitution. Gen Musharraf had not asked for the same, but the court demonstrated its generosity to him, he said.

Expressing their no-confidence in the Supreme Court, he said, the Pakistan Bar Council, Supreme Court Bar Council and many other bar associations had refused to file any constitutional petition in the apex court.”Even the Supreme Court cannot make any changes into the Constitution, how it can allow a dictator to amend it?” he asked.

He said the Supreme Court judges had taken an oath under the Provisional Constitutional Order (PCO) when they announced their verdict in the Zafar Ali Shah case. They held no right to make such an unconstitutional verdict, he added.

“When judges strike a deal with the king, they bring a wrath on society, and justice cease to exist. The king grants privileges to judges and in return, they allow him to continue his tyranny,” he added.

He said: “We have taken the oath under the Constitution and not the LFO. We want the government to put the LFO before parliament to start a discussion on it. No one can insert any changes into the Constitution forcibly”.

Mr Khan said the president was a symbol of the federation and had an electoral college, which included four provincial assemblies and both houses of parliament.

But Mr Musharraf was reluctant to present himself before this college, he added.

Despite their numerical strength, the Constitution provided the provincial assemblies with an equal numbers of votes to elect the president to bar the dominant position of one province, he added.

He said: “It is the beauty of the Constitution, which closes doors on dictators. But the present anti-constitution clique wants to remove it through unconstitutional methods”.

Mr Khan claimed that some of the amendments were Benazir and Nawaz-specific, and rulers wanted to retain them. Some others were an encroachment upon the provincial autonomy, he added.

According to the 1998 Census, he said, the NWFP made a share of 46 seats, but under the 1987 Census the rulers had allotted to the province 43 seats. “This makes a loss of Rs34 billion to the NWFP till the next census”, he added.

Earlier, Abbas Khalil Khan of the ANP and Provincial Minister Malik Zafar Azam concluded the debate on the price-hike and unemployment.