July 13, 2007	Friday	Jamadi-us-Sani 27, 1428

ISLAMABAD, July 12: The Senate Standing Committee on Rules of Procedure and Privileges on Thursday considered and approved various amendments to the Senate rules with consensus while Opposition Leader Raza Rabbani accused the government of bulldozing the process and amending the rules without consulting the opposition members.

Talking to Dawn, the opposition leader who was not present in the Thursday’s meeting, alleged that the committee chairman had made it a tradition not to consult the opposition members before convening the meeting.

Mr Rabbani said that he would lodge a formal protest with Senate Chairman Mohammadmian Soomro over the attitude of the treasury members and the chairman of the committee.

Mr Rabbani said it seemed that the government wanted to amend some of the rules on its own by bulldozing the whole process. However, he said the opposition members would not let the government push through the rules and would put a strong resistance.

He said earlier it was a tradition to consult all the members of the committee before convening the meeting. He said the government had been ignoring this tradition for the past many months which showed that it wanted to bypass the opposition members.

Mr Rabbani said that due to this attitude of the government members, PML-N Senator Sadia Abbasi had even staged a walkout from one of the previous meetings.

Ruling Pakistan Muslim League (PML) member of the committee Naeem Hussain Chattha, when contacted, said the committee had so far not discussed the important and major proposed amendments to the rules due to the absence of senior opposition members. He said that they had not made any major change in the rules so far and only the language had been improved.

According to an official handout issued by the Senate Secretariat, committee chairman Col (retd) Syed Tahir Mashhadi lauded the members for taking keen interest and giving valuable input in streamlining the rules of procedure.