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| August 10, 2006 | Thursday | Rajab 14, 1427 |
SC judgment in PSM case: PPP submits motions to NA
ISLAMABAD, Aug 9: Some members of the People’s Party Parliamentarians (PPP) on Wednesday submitted two adjournment motions to the National Assembly Secretariat seeking discussion on the privatization of Pakistan Steel Mills (PSM) in light of the detailed judgment of the Supreme Court of Pakistan.
The motion was submitted after the National Assembly session during which two federal ministers stated that the government was ready to hold a debate in parliament on the detailed judgment of the SC, when the opposition members would bring the matter through rules and regulations.
One of the motions stated that the SC had held that the entire disinvestment process of the PSM reflected a process of “indecent” haste, ignoring both the profitability as well as the assets of the mills by the financial adviser before its evaluation. The transaction was the outcome of a process reflecting violation of law and gross irregularities, says the 80-page judgment in the PSM case.
On June 23, a nine-member bench of the SC had annulled the sale of the country’s largest industrial unit to a three-party consortium and had directed the government to refer the matter to the Council of Common Interests within six weeks. It had declared the $362 million transaction with the Russian-Saudi-Pakistani investors as null and void. The judgment says that the entire exercise reflects an indecent haste by the Privatization Commission (PC) and the Cabinet Committee on Privatization (CCOP). The financial adviser’s belated submission, just 24 hours before the bidding date, had deprived the PC and the CCOP of assessing the report independently. The verdict says the CCOP had considered the summary on March 31, fixed a reference price and authorized the PC to approve the highest bid.
The court maintained that this unexplained haste cast reasonable doubt on the transparency of the whole exercise and reflected CCOP’s disregard towards mandatory rules and materials, essential for arriving at a fair reference price. Besides, the cabinet committee had ignored the board’s proposal that the mill’s net assets should be included while valuing the project.
The motion states that “about the Arif Habib Group of Companies, the verdict is equally damning.” It says the PC knew that one member of the three-party consortium was facing allegations of involvement in the Karachi Stock Exchange crash, pending Rs18.2 billion damage suits. The verdict says that the PC should have considered this before declaring Arif Habib qualified, adding that a person involved in litigation and against whom a report had been issued publicly by a task force should not have been considered for handling affairs of the PSM. Besides, the bidders were different from the purchasers, the judgment notes, adding that names of the purchasers shown in the April 24 agreement had not been approved by the CCOP.
“This detailed judgment raises serious questions for the government’s already eroded credibility. It reflects a complete and open disregard for any process of accountability on part of the government when selling off one of the country’s largest national assets. This kind of action has drawn the utmost censure from the highest court of the land and by any standard constitutes the highest ground for a vote of no confidence in the working of the Musharraf regime. The fact that the court specifically mentioned acts of commission and omission as a grave factor of concern in the entire process has left no doubt in anyone’s mind about the flagrant corruption and graft of the regime,” says the motion.
Through another motion the opposition members have drawn the attention of the National Assembly to a statement of Minister for Privatization Zahid Hamid made in the Senate that three lawyers - Sharifuddin Pirzada (prime minister’s adviser on law), Abdul Hafiz Pirzada and former law minister Khalid Anwar - had received Rs9 million as fee for the PSM privatization case in the SC, which they lost.
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