ISLAMABAD, Sept 7: The government on Thursday deferred a planned debate on a women’s rights bill in the National Assembly possibly until next week, holding out a suspicious olive branch to hardline religious parties threatening to resign from the house if the draft is passed.
The government’s Protection of Women (Criminal Laws Amendment) Bill seeking to protect women from the misuse of two controversial Hudood laws was the first item on the day’s legislative agenda but was not taken up for unexplained reasons while talks were being held between leaders of the ruling Pakistan Muslim League and the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal.
In an apparently orchestrated move, Speaker Chaudhry Amir Hussain allowed members to use points of order to speak on numerous other issues ranging from the troubles of an Islamic investment bank to the disappearance of some professionals allegedly picked up by intelligence agencies and a row between some members of the ruling party over the grievances of the Seraiki-speaking region of Punjab.
There was no government explanation inside the house for the deferment or whether the bill would now be put on Friday’s agenda although the ruling coalition had earlier appeared to be in a hurry to get the bill through both houses of parliament well before President Pervez Musharraf’s planned visit to the United States in mid-September.
But MMA sources said the government side had sought time until Monday to let its nominees on an eight-member joint committee to discuss the issue with MMA nominees.
A private television channel quoted Law and Justice Minister Mohammad Wasi Zafar as saying the committee’s recommendations were expected on Monday morning and would be presented to the house at its sitting in the evening.
The original bill was introduced in the National Assembly on August 21 amid noisy protests by the MMA and was referred back to the house last Monday with amendments made by a special select committee, which was boycotted by the MMA, but included members from the People’s Party Parliamentarians (PPP).
It was not immediately known if the PPP would go along with the ruling coalition over the bill if it were amended to meet MMA’s demands, which says it will not accept any changes in Hudood punishments.
PPP secretary-general Raja Pervez Ashraf said his party would make its reaction about any more changes in the bill known after they were brought to the house.
The government had earlier planned to push the bill through the National Assembly during Thursday’s sitting without much debate in view of the MMA’s boycott and the PPP’s tacit support and call a Senate session for Thursday evening, possibly to get the draft through the upper house as well the same day.
But a parliamentary source said the decision to call the Senate session on Friday evening was changed at the last moment.
Earlier, soon after the question hour, the Speaker announced his acceptance of the resignation submitted on Wednesday by Abdul Rauf Mengal, the only member of the Balochistan National Party- Mengal in the house, to protest against the killing of Baloch leader Akbar Khan Bugti and declared that the member’s seat, NA-269 in Khuzdar district, had fallen vacant.
Minister of State Shahnaz Sheikh, responding to an opposition call-attention notice, said the government was planning to bring in the next session of the house a bill to curb ‘clandestine sale of kidneys for transplants’.
The authors of the notice had complained of cases of poor labourers at brick kilns being forced to sell their kidneys and poor people kidnapped for forcible removal of their kidneys.
The Speaker said people responsible for kidnappings and forcible removal of kidneys could be proceeded against under the Pakistan Penal Code even before the new law was framed.
PPP member Aitzaz Ahsan said such forcible removals of human organs could be awarded up to death penalty.
Parliamentary Affairs Minister Sher Afgan Khan Niazi assured the house that he would take up the issue of the Islamic Investment Bank with the Finance Ministry and the State Bank of Pakistan.
