ISLAMABAD, Aug 2: The NWFP government on Tuesday claimed that the purpose of introducing the Hasba bill was to enforce the existing laws for the good of the people through an office having links with them.

“There is no shortage of laws in this country but what is lacking is their enforcement,” Advocate Khalid Anwar argued before a nine-member bench of the Supreme Court hearing a reference filed by President Pervez Musharraf under advisory jurisdiction of the court against the bill.

Headed by Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry, the apex court bench decided to commence the proceedings half an hour before the scheduled time and to sit overtime on a regular basis to conclude the hearing within this week.

The court clarified that the speaker of the NWFP assembly was not a party although it had issued notices to the four advocates-general and the secretary of the NWFP assembly.

Attorney-General Makhdoom Ali Khan in his concluding arguments said that provincial legislators had declared the law a ‘money bill’ in a mala fide way to deprive the NWFP governor of his prerogative of sending the law back to the assembly.

“Any bill except a money bill can be returned by the governor to the concerned assembly for revision or amendment,” he said.

Mr Anwar emphasized that through the bill the assembly did not intend to arm someone (mohtasib) with a general warrant to arrest every other person but the idea was to enforce the existing laws on public complaints through an office the doors of which would always remain open for them.

He said the Hasba bill had a duality of focus with main thrust on public servants to weed out corruption and on individual’s personal conduct. Islam, he added, was not merely a religion of individuals, rather it was a complete religion for the benefit of both individuals and society.

He said Pakistan was not a secular country and it was the duty of the government to facilitate holding of Friday prayers and taraveeh.

Would not people ask the MMA during the upcoming local government polls what its government did to eradicate corruption? he asked. Should they be told that the provincial government had been stopped from approving the Hasba bill by the apex court? he posed another question.

The Hasba bill, he pointed out, would introduce accountability to protect society, especially women and children, from emerging evils and mis-justices.

Earlier, the attorney-general expressed the hope that the court would answer in the affirmative to all the seven questions raised by the president in the reference, saying the bill did not lay down clear guidelines for citizens to find out what conduct was permissible and what was forbidden.

During the course of hearing, Justice Sardar Raza observed that people should accept laws, if they were not contrary to the constitution, enacted by their legislators as it were they who had elected them and, therefore, this was their headache.

The judge said that if under the Pakistan Penal Code, a person could be punished for defying an order even of a Station House Officer then what was the illegality behind penalizing for not obeying the instructions of the mohtasib, adding it seemed from the arguments that legislators could do nothing but others could do everything.

The AG said that the powers of the mohtasib (ombudsman) were open-ended and could lead to infringing the fundamental rights of individuals, adding that the state had no role to regulate private beliefs of a person unless his expression or practice caused breach of public order.

Justice Javed Iqbal, referring to Sura Al Haj and Sura Al Imran, inquired how the state could be aloof when there were clear injunctions to observe regular prayers and establish system of charity (Zakat) and that Muslims were better than others since they encouraged good and discouraged evils.

The AG said that the NWFP legislators through the Hasba bill had delegated open-ended and vague powers to the mohtasib without laying down clear guidelines or identifying parameters and that the disobedience of the mohtasib’s orders would entail consequences. The mohtasib enjoys the power to decide what is right and what is wrong, but an ordinary citizen could not understand what is permitted and what is forbidden on a bare reading of the law.

Therefore, the AG maintained, the law was against the constitution as it violated Articles 4 (Right of individuals to be dealt with in accordance with law), 9 (Security of person), 14 (Inviolability of dignity of man) and 25 (Equality of citizen).