ISLAMABAD, Sept 9: President Gen Pervez Musharraf on Saturday called a Senate session beginning on Tuesday in an apparent move to rush a women’s right bill through both houses of parliament early next week.
The National Assembly is due to take up the Protection of Women (Criminal Laws Amendment) Bill on Monday. Government plans are to get it passed the same day in the face of a threat by religious parties to resign from the house to protest against what they see as a law contrary to Islamic teachings.
Parliamentary sources said the government would bring the bill passed by the National Assembly to the first sitting of the Senate beginning at 4pm on Tuesday and possibly get it through the upper house the same evening.
The government had earlier planned to call a Senate session on Thursday evening after a morning sitting of the National Assembly was scheduled to take up and possibly pass the bill, which seeks to protect women from the misuse of two controversial Islamic Hudood laws concerning Zina (rape and adultery) and Qazf (false allegation of Zina).
But the plans were changed after the government decided to defer the consideration of the bill to allow time for consultations in an eight-member committee of four Islamic scholars each from the ruling Pakistan Muslim League and the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal alliance of six Islamic parties.
WAITING FOR MEETING: Saturday’s Senate secretariat notification announcing the president’s order to summon the upper house came while there was still no word of any progress in the planned talks between religious scholars.
No formal meeting between the nominees of the two sides had been held until late Saturday evening, an MMA spokesman said.
Alliance deputy parliamentary leader Hafiz Hussain Ahmed, who heads the MMA team of ulema for the negotiations, told Dawn his side had been indicated three different timings for a meeting on Saturday — 9am, 11am and 6pm — but the other side did not turn up.
He said PML President Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain, who had proposed the joint consultations, was reported to be meeting PML-nominated ulema in Lahore.
“They are doing net practice there and we are waiting in the field here (in Islamabad),” the witty MMA leader said, using the cricket jargon.
The PML president told the National Assembly on Friday the bill could be ‘corrected’ if the religious scholars came up with a conclusion that any of its provisions was contrary to holy Quran and Sunnat.
But, in an indication of differences within the ruling coalition, Parliamentary Affairs Minister Sher Afgan Niazi of the government-allied Pakistan People’s Party (Patriots) said the draft was in line with Quran and Sunnat and ‘will be passed in the same shape as it was approved by a house select committee,’ which was boycotted by the MMA but joined by the other main opposition group, the People’s Party Parliamentarians.
The Muttahida Qaumi Movement, a key ally in the coalition, has said it will reconsider its support for the bill if changes are made in the select committee-approved draft by an ‘extra-parliamentary forum.’ The PPP, some of whose amendments have been incorporated in the bill, says it will react after new changes were brought before the National Assembly.
In a related move, Senate leader of the house Wasim Sajjad on Saturday called a meeting of the parliamentary party of the PML and allied groups in the upper house at the parliament house at 3pm on Tuesday, a statement by his office said.
