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| 15 April 2004 | Thursday | 24 Safar 1425 |
Opposition cries foul as NSC bill is passed
ISLAMABAD, April 14: The government rushed its key National Security Council (NSC) bill through the Senate on Wednesday to get it passed in just three and a half minutes after an opposition walkout, fuelling tensions between the two sides.
Senate chairman Mohammedmian Soomro abruptly cut short a general debate on the bill after the walkout by all opposition parties to protest against what they called their inadequate representation in 27 house committees announced earlier on Wednesday and put it to vote to be passed by only the treasury benches.
The opposition parties later condemned the hasty passage of an important legislation in their absence as "the worst incident in Pakistan's parliament" and a "crime" and said they would reconsider government-opposition relationship in the upper house.
The bill, which creates a 13-member National Security Council to give the military a permanent legal role in the country's governance, was hurriedly passed by the National Assembly a week ago amid an opposition walkout and now needs only a presidential assent to become law, or act of parliament.
The council will be headed by the president with its other 12 members being the prime minister, Senate chairman, National Assembly speaker, leader of opposition in the National Assembly, chief ministers of the country's four provinces, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee, and chiefs of staff of the army, the navy and the air force.
The bill says the NSC will only be a consultative body to make recommendations to the president and the government but opposition parties say it will in effect give the military a role to dictate the government and parliament and thus negate the parliamentary system of government envisioned by the country's 1973 Constitution.
The vote on the bill culminated a Senate sitting marked by controversy after the treasury benches and the chair first rejected an opposition adjournment motion seeking a debate on the alleged US interference in Pakistan's internal affairs on the issue of nuclear proliferation and a later on their grouse about less than a proportional share in house committees, over which the opposition walked out.
The chairman suggested to leader of house Wasim Sajjad to persuade opposition members to return to the house as he called some names of opposition senators to resume the general debate on the National Security Council bill that was begun on Tuesday.
But, for unknown reasons, Mr Sajjad and the piloting Minister of State for Law and Parliamentary Affairs Mohammad Raza Hayat Hiraj called for an immediate vote on the bill while opposition members called to speak were not in the house.
The chairman, agreeing with the government suggestion, dispensed with the remaining names on a list of speakers from both sides of the house for the general debate, or the first reading, and immediately put the nine clauses of the bill separately to vote in the second reading and then the whole of the bill in the third reading.
It took three and a half minutes to complete the process with final vote by the ruling coalition members, who cheered by desk-thumping their own passage of the bill before the chair adjourned the house until 10am on Friday.
OPPOSITION OUTRAGED: "Today's incident - this is a tragedy - is the worst in the history of Pakistan's parliament and Senate," Democratic Alliance and PPP parliamentary leader Raza Rabbani later told a news conference with other opposition figures.
He said the government took advantage of the opposition walkout to bulldoze the bill "in just three minutes" because it could not justify its position against arguments made by opposition speakers in the two sittings of the house on Tuesday. "We strongly condemn this (action) and we will decide later our role in next Friday's session," he said.
He said Wednesday's move by the treasury benches had totally cut off their dialogue with opposition about running the house and added that "specially we are not ready to sit with Wasim Sajjad", whom he accused of destroying his credibility to pay back for favours done to him by the government.
Mr Rabbani said members of the ruling coalition seemed to be in the midst of a season to show more and more loyalty to those at the helm of affairs and accused an unnamed minister of "inciting" the president to violate the Constitution by urging him not to give up his army chief's post by December 31 as required by the Constitution's 17th Amendment passed in December.
He said while ARD acting president Javed Hashmi could be convicted for only reading out a letter from unknown army officers to a news conference, "it is to be seen whether the law will take its course or not" against the minister.
Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal (MMA) parliamentary leader Prof Khurshid Ahmed accused the government of committing "three crimes" on one day - rejection of Mr Rabbani's adjournment motion about American interference, a discriminatory choice of house committees and bulldozing the NSC bill - "a wonder not only in Pakistan but in the whole world".
He called the NSC bill "a national insecurity bill" and said his alliance of six Islamic parties would also review its strategy to be followed in parliament. PML-N parliamentary leader Ishaq Dar, a former finance minister who was earlier listed to be first speaker of the day in the debate, accused the government of deceiving the opposition to bulldoze the NSC bill that he said would be repealed whenever the opposition parties got majority in parliament as his party had done with the Constitution's article 85 (2) (b) when in power.
Sanaullah Baloch of the Balochistan National Party-Mengal said the 1973 Constitution had practically ceased to exist while the NSC bill in effect gave dominance to one province over three others. He added: "If they take such decision we also have the right to take our own decisions".
Ilyas Ahmad Bilour said his Awami National Party would neither accept President Musharraf's Legal Framework Order nor the NSC bill as it was one of the founders of the 1973 Constitution and added: "Today's democracy is no democracy but Punjab's dictatorship."
Raza Mohammad Raza of the Balochistan-based Pashtunkhawa Milli Awami Party complained that Pakistan had been turned into "a military state" where the military would remain permanently in power through the NSC and said parliament would be turned into "a battlefield" in the struggle for democracy across the country.
MMA's veteran parliamentarian Prof Ghafoor Ahmed accused the government of denying the opposition proper time both in the National Assembly and the Senate to consider NSC bill, which he said had put the country's security in danger.
The bill says the NSC "shall serve as forum for consultation to the president and the government on matters of national security including sovereignty, integrity, defence, security of the state and crisis management".
It also provides that the council "shall formulate and make recommendations to the president and the government in accordance with the (stipulated) consultations". "Any proposal on an issue deemed to be of national importance which requires implementation shall be referred by the council to the National Assembly or Senate for appropriate action," says an amendment inserted into the original bill.
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