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| 20 April 2004 | Tuesday | 29 Safar 1425 |
NSC comes into being
ISLAMABAD, April 19: President Pervez Musharraf on Monday put his signature of approval to the recently passed National Security Council (NSC) Bill, bringing into being the 13-seat NSC to be headed by him that gives the military a legal role in Pakistan's governance.
A brief government announcement saying the president had given his assent to the bill - turning it into an act of parliament - came five days after the completion of a hurried parliamentary approval of controversial law.
The president will be the chairman of the NSC with 12 other members being the prime minister, Senate chairman, National Assembly speaker, opposition leader in the National Assembly, chief ministers of the four provinces, Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee chairman, and chiefs of staff of the army, the navy and the air force.
But for the moment the NSC consists of only 11 members because President Gen Musharraf is holding both offices of the president and chief of the chief of army staff and no opposition leader has been designated in the National Assembly by the lower house speaker.
However, the council will become functional despite the two vacancies as the act empowers the president to call a meeting of the council at his discretion or on the prime minister's advice "notwithstanding the vacancy in the office of one or more members."
While the offices of the president and the army chief must be separated after Dec 31 under the Constitution (Seventeenth Amendment) Bill passed by parliament last December, the National Assembly has remained without an opposition leader for about one and a half years of its existence while speaker Chaudhry Amir Hussain has not decided on rival claims to the office by the Alliance for the Restoration of Democracy and the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal.
Now that the NSC has come into existence, the next steps to make it functional will be the appointment of a secretary to head a council secretariat and notification of rules to govern the functioning of the body.
However, until the rules are made, the law authorises the secretary to "exercise such powers and perform such functions as may be necessary for carrying out the purposes of this act" with the chairman's approval.
According to the act, the council "shall serve as a forum for consultation to the president and the government on matters of national security including the sovereignty, integrity, defence, security of state and crisis management."
The council will formulate and make recommendations to the president and the government and refer to the National Assembly or the Senate for "appropriate action" any proposal on "an issue deemed to be of national importance which requires implementation."
But the opposition parties say the act will in effect give the military a role to dictate the government and parliament. The new law is an offshoot of last December's deal under which the MMA agreed to join hands with the ruling coalition to give a slightly modified version of President Musharraf's controversial Legal Framework Order (LFO) - the Constitution (17th Amendment) Bill - by the required two-thirds majority.
Under the deal, the original provision for the NSC was taken out of the LFO and the two sides agreed that the council could be created through an act of parliament.
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