ISLAMABAD: In a bid to end the stalemate on the Panama Papers leaks, Finance Minister Ishaq Dar met Leader of the Opposition in the National Assembly Khurshid Ahmed Shah, asking him to agree on a date for the meeting of the parliamentary committee formed to prepare terms of reference (ToR) for the proposed inquiry commission.

Mr Shah, however, told the minister on Tuesday that he would respond to the government’s invitation in a day or two after consulting Leader of the Opposition in the Senate Aitzaz Ahsan and other opposition allies.

Before meeting Mr Shah, the finance minister had called on Senate Chairman Raza Rabbani. However, sources claimed that it was an informal meeting which was also attended by Nasreen Jalil of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) and Farhatullah Babar and Salim Mandviwala of the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP).

Talking to the media, the finance minister said that his meeting with Mr Shah had a one-point agenda and that was to discuss the draft of the bill, ‘The Commissions of Inquiry Act, 2016’, which the government had drafted keeping in view the opposition’s demand for a specific law under which the commission would hold investigations against those owning offshore companies.

The proposed law will replace the existing Inquiry Commission Act of 1956.

Mr Dar said that since Chief Justice of Pakistan Anwar Zaheer Jamali had already termed the 1956 act as “toothless”, the government had decided to “give it teeth” and bring in a new law to make the commission powerful.

According to the finance minister, the existing law had been there for the last 60 years and inquiries had been conducted under it into various incidents from the separation of East Pakistan in 1971 to the death of Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad in 2012.

However, he said, there were general feelings that the law should be changed and the commission should be empowered.

The minister said the government had already handed over the draft of the proposed law to the opposition parties during a meeting of the parliamentary committee a few months ago with the understanding that it would not be made public.

He disclosed that the government had further improved the draft and wanted to discuss it with the opposition parties after which the draft would be made public.

Mr Dar said that since there was no convener of the parliamentary committee on the Panama Papers, he had to use the offices of the National Assembly (NA) speaker or the opposition leader to agree on a date for the meeting.

He added that after the intervention of NA Speaker Ayaz Sadiq last month, the members of the committee had agreed to meet on Aug 9, but they had to postpone the meeting due to the suicide attack in Quetta on Aug 8.

The finance minister told reporters to wait for a month to see the outcome of his meeting with the opposition leader.

In June, after a series of meetings of the parliamentary committee on the Panama Papers leaks, the opposition parties had decided not to hold further negotiations with the ruling coalition after the government’s refusal to accept their ToR for a Panama-specific probe.

After the deadlock between the government and the opposition over the ToR, the opposition parties separately filed references before the NA speaker and the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) seeking disqualification of the prime minister and other members of his family from parliament for allegedly concealing assets and details of taxes.

The government and opposition leaders had agreed on May 18 to form a 12-member parliamentary committee — including six members each from both sides — that will draft the ToR for the proposed commission to be headed by the Chief Justice of Pakistan (CJP) for holding an inquiry against those owning offshore companies as revealed by the Panama Papers.

Both the government and opposition parties had agreed that besides concentrating on the individuals named in the Panama Papers, the committee will also go after those who received kickbacks and commissions, as well as those who had their loans written off illegally.

The agreement between the government and the opposition was reached in a meeting held at the chamber of the NA speaker a day after the prime minister’s address to the assembly on May 17.

The prime minister had already agreed to constitute a judicial commission under the CJP on the demand of opposition parties and the government wrote to the CJP to form the commission. The government had also sent the commission’s ToR to the CJP.

A nine-party opposition alliance not only rejected the government-prepared ToR, but presented its own version, demanding that the judicial commission begin the inquiry with the prime minister and his family.

The opposition’s case was strengthened when the CJP also rejected the government-proposed ToR and called for the formation of the judicial commission through new legislation.

The opposition parties had already announced that they would introduce in parliament a bill seeking the formation of a judicial commission on the Panama Papers to put pressure on the government, which was reluctant to do the legislation despite the opposition’s demand.

The opposition wants formation of the commission through legislation like the judicial commission it had formed some two years ago to hold an investigation into charges of rigging in the 2013 general elections.

Meanwhile, Leader of the Opposition in the Senate Aitzaz Ahsan convened a meeting of the opposition parties in his Parliament House chamber on Wednesday to discuss the government’s initiative and devise a future course of action.

Published in Dawn, August 17th, 2016