ISLAMABAD: The government finally got a softened Protection of Pakistan Bill through parliament on Wednesday as a new legal armour to fight terrorism, but exposed an apparent cleft in its own ranks during a vote in the National Assembly.

However, despite the accommodation of many opposition amendments to what had become the most controversial legislation of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s one-year-old administration on grounds of violation of fundamental rights, the new law was passed by a majority vote in a special one-day session of the 342-seat lower house, failing to get unanimity shown by a similar one-day session of the opposition-controlled 104-seat Senate two days ago.

The bill, based on two presidential ordinances decreed in October 2013 and last January, now needs only a formal presidential assent to become law for two years, instead of the previously stipulated three years.

The bill’s major concessions include more safeguards in the use of powers to law-enforcement officers to shoot a terrorism suspect at sight, reduction in remand period to 60 days from 90 days, judicial oversight of internment camps and right of appeal to high courts instead of only once to the Supreme Court.

PPP, MQM vote for the bill; PTI, JI abstain

With the ruling PML-N present in strength, the opposition PPP and Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), along with some smaller groups voted for the bill while Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) and its smaller ally Jamaat-i-Islami abstained mainly for alleged infringement of fundamental rights though vowing to stand by the armed forces in their military operation against militants in North Waziristan.

But while exuding some pride in getting the bill through both the houses of parliament after seeing it blocked by the Senate following its bulldozing in the National Assembly in April, the government, apparently deliberately, avoided to explain a prolonged absence of Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan from the house, hinting there was something more to it than any health reason.

“Chaudhry Nisar is absent from the house, I want to know why?” PTI deputy chairman Shah Mahmood Qureshi asked about what he called the architect of the government’s new national security policy.

“It is worth reflection and worth consideration why the interior minister is not present to steer the bill,” he said in the presence of the prime minister.

While Leader of Opposition Khursheed Ahmed Shah avoided to make Chaudhry Nisar’s absence as an issue while announcing PPP’s support for the bill, Awami Muslim League leader Sheikh Rashid Ahmed sought to poke fun, saying he was issuing a “missing” notice for the interior minister through the media and asking him to “come back …” (without fear of any admonition).

In his speech afterwards, Science and Technology Minister Zahid Hamid said the prime minister had asked him “at the start” to pilot the bill both in the National Assembly and Senate and that the same would have happened even if the interior minister had been in the lower house on Wednesday.

The remark seemed to suggest that the prime minister, for some unexplained reason, had kept Chau­dhry Nisar from handling the bill.

Speculations were galore in the lobbies of the Parliament House over whether the prime minister was unhappy with the interior minister’s frequent quarrels with the opposition or the minister was unh­appy with the prime minister’s policies.

Mr Hamid has continued to look after the government’s legislative business in parliament even after the law ministry’s portfolio was taken away from him last year in a move to spare him possible embarrassment in pursuing charges of high treason against former president Pervez Musharraf though he was the last law minister of his government.

In defending the bill on Wednes­day, Mr Hamid rejected Mr Qureshi’s allegation that the new bill would mark a “paradigm shift” in placing the burden of proof on the accused and cited some previous laws from as back as early days of Pakistan containing similar provisions.

He also ruled out MQM parliamentary leader Farooq Sattar’s proposal to give one or two hours to a house committee to further improve the bill after the party had joined the Senate consensus on it, while acceptance of five suggestions from Mr Sattar, such as excluding arson from the definition of “scheduled” offences actionable under the bill and providing for a medical board to examine a detainee once a week, would have meant another shuttle of the legislation between the two houses as had happened earlier to amendments made in the Senate.

“Parliament should today stand united behind the armed forces of Pakistan,” the minister said as he called for the bill to be voted upon, before Speaker Sardar Ayaz Sadiq read out a presidential order proroguing the house after a sitting of more than three hours.

Published in Dawn, July 3rd, 2014