November 15, 2006	Wednesday	Shawwal 22, 1427

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ISLAMABAD, Nov 14: The Hasba bill bulldozed in the NWFP Assembly on Monday is against the Constitution, creates parallel judiciary and empowers clerics to snoop around private individuals that will further polarise society and push people back into the dark ages in the name of Islam, said Pakistan Peoples Party.

In a statement here on Tuesday, PPP spokesman, former senator Farhatullah Babar said his party condemned the bill in the strongest possible terms and urged the human rights bodies and civil society to foil attempts to rob the people of their rights.

The provision in the bill for the appointment of religious ombudsmen at different levels and raising a brigade of moral police to impose on the citizens a partisan world view in the name of ‘propagation of virtue and prevention of vice’ is aimed at Talibanisation of society.

“The refrain of “amr bil maroof and nahin anil munkar” ominously brings to mind the Taliban’s era in Afghanistan, the summary shaving off of heads of Pakistani football players in Qandahar for wearing shorts and of pulling down the Bhudda statues,” he said.

He said the bill was aimed at doling out judicial and other jobs of consultants and advisers to madressah graduates and to fool the people as general elections approach.

“Spending of hundreds of millions on these new offices amounts to foisting mediaeval nonsense at public expense,” he said.

“The implications of allowing the Pakistani Taliban to regulate the private lives of citizens in the name of enforcing ‘Islamic value system’ are ominous”.

He said laws already existed for dealing with the transgressions listed, and there was no need for making new laws.

“If the regime in Islamabad failed to take note of this transgression it would only strengthen the perception of the military’s alliance with retrograde forces.”

The fact that under section 10(c) of the bill the armed forces have been exempted from the prying eyes of a moral police strengthens the suspicion of collusion between the two that began when the generals’ role in politics was endorsed by adopting the 17th Amendment, he said.