ISLAMABAD, Sept 8: The government on Friday vowed to get the women’s rights bill passed by the National Assembly on Monday ‘at all costs.’ “The protection of women bill will be on agenda on Monday and we will get it approved by the National Assembly at all costs,” said Minister for Parliamentary Affairs Dr Sher Afgan Niazi.
He said the religious alliance of the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal had a free hand if it could stop passage of the bill by the lower house.
Later, Pakistan Muslim League President Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain reassured the MMA that the bill would be ‘corrected’ if any provisions were found contrary to holy Quran and Sunnat.
Another snub to the Hussain-led move to accommodate the MMA came from a key government ally, the Muttahida Qaumi Movement, which said it would reconsider its support for the bill if changes were made in the select committee-approved draft ‘by an extra-parliamentary forum.’
The bill seeking to protect women from the misuse of two controversial Islamic Hudood laws enforced in 1979 by the then military ruler Gen Ziaul Haq had earlier been put on Thursday’s agenda of the house. But it was deferred until Monday to let an eight-member committee of the PML and MMA nominees meet to remove differences.
The Hussain-led move came after the MMA threatened its 66 members of the National Assembly would resign and the alliance would withdraw from the PML-led coalition in Balochistan if the government went ahead with the efforts to get the bill passed. The alliance says the bill is contrary to Quran and Sunnah for seeking to change punishments prescribed by Islam for Zina (rape and adultery) and Qazf (false allegation of Zina).
The MMA had boycotted the select committee that recommended approval of the bill after several changes, including some proposed by the People’s Party Parliamentarians, which, as a matter of policy, wants repeal of all the four Hudood ordinances enforced by Gen Ziaul Haq as part of his so-called Islamisation of the society.
The PPP says it will react to new changes in the bill after they are known.
Mr Niazi, who belongs to the government-allied Pakistan People’s Party (Patriots), told reporters he was not concerned with the conciliation committee and took instructions from Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz.
Mr Hussain’s intervention came after MMA deputy parliamentary leader Hafiz Hussain Ahmed said the alliance wondered whom to trust when the PML chief and Mr Niazi seemed to be pulling in different directions.
Mr Ahmed described the bill as a ‘present’ President Gen Pervez Musharraf wanted to take to the United States during his planned visit to it later this month.
The PML president said it had been agreed that the committee would furnish report by Monday and added: “They have only to tell (us) if there is anything against Quran, which will be corrected.”
His remarks that ‘only a cursed person will vote against Quran and Sunnah’ sparked an angry response from an outspoken PML member, Riaz Hussain Pirzada, who said law-makers’ right to interpret Quran and Sunnah while legislating should not be restricted by such conditions.
Just before the house was adjourned until Monday, PPP members walked out to protest against alleged political victimisation by the National Accountability Bureau as a Rawalpindi court on Thursday had issued non-bailable warrants for the third time for the arrest of self-exiled party leader Benazir Bhutto and her husband Asif Ali Zardari in a NAB case, accusing the couple of making false declarations of assets before the 1993 elections. The only legislative work done by Friday’s sitting was the introduction by the government of a Carriage of Goods by Sea Bill, seeking to amend and update the existing law about carriage of goods by sea.
