ISLAMABAD, Aug 8: The government assured the Senate on Friday that the process of a planned impeachment of President Pervez Musharraf would be fair, rejecting an opposition charge of horse-trading to change loyalties of parliament members, but said the result would be the ouster of the isolated leader.
“The requirements of the Constitution and law will be followed,” leader of the house Raza Rabbani said while winding up a heated debate on internal security marked by furores over complaints by two ruling coalition members of breach of their privilege by government agencies before the upper house was prorogued after a five-day opposition-called session.
Responding to Pakistan Muslim League-Q (PML-Q) secretary-general Senator Mushahid Hussain’s allegation during the debate that horse-trading had already begun, Mr Rabbani said the coalition did not need to do that as it had more than the required two-thirds of the total membership of the two houses of parliament to pass an impeachment resolution.
“If there is horse-trading, it will be done by Gen Musharraf by using institutions,” he said and called the president as an “inventor” of the process, in an apparent reference to the allegedly engineered floor-crossing by some 20 members of the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) in the last National Assembly in 2002 to elect Mir Zafarullah Khan Jamali as the first of three PML-Q prime ministers in five years and denying the PPP the right to form the Sindh provincial government despite being the largest party in the provincial assembly.
“Impeachment will be carried out and its result will be the same as of Aug 18 elections,” Mr Rabbani said in a reference to the election won by the coalition parties, amid repeated interruptions by a PML-Q woman member and added: “Musharraf will have to go.”
“God-willing 333 votes will be cast (for the impeachment resolution),” Senator Mohammad Azam Swati of the Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam shouted. The coalition government needs at least 295, or two-thirds, of the 440-strong total membership of the 342-seat National Assembly and the 100-seat Senate.
Mr Mushahid had earlier said the impeachment process would be a big test for the Pakistani democracy and parliament and said it must be handled democratically although, according to him, an impeachment or the use of Constitution’s article 58(2)b were “no solution” of the country’s problems.
He accused the government of starting horse-trading, saying “bidding (for members’ votes) has begun”.
He defended the president who he said had not been accused of corruption in more than eight years of his rule and, in a show of continued political fidelity to him, added: “We have a right to defend ourselves and fight back.”
NAB NABBED: During an interruption in the debate, an outraged house demanded an immediate disbandment of the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) after PPP’s Senator Safdar Ali Abbasi said he was manhandled outside a NAB court in Rawalpindi earlier in the day, and set up a seven-member bipartisan committee to probe grievances in the troubled Balochistan province cited by Senator Israrullah Zehri of the government-allied Balochistan National Party-Awami while alleging his mistreatment by a paramilitary force there on Monday.
Both the senators’ personal complaints were referred to the house privileges committee whose chairman Tahir Hussain Mashhadi said he would take up Mr Abbasi’s grievances on Monday because of the senator’s demand of urgent action and planned to call NAB chief for an explanation.
Mr Rabbani said the committee on Balochistan, whose members from both the ruling coalition and opposition were to be named later, should report on the situation in Balochistan to the house and Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani in seven to eight weeks.
He said he had visualised what he thought would have been a more effective committee of both houses of parliament headed by the prime minister whose recommendation could not be put under the carpet, but conceded to the insistence of some PML-Q members for a house committee to be set up immediately for which they staged a token walkout.
Mr Rabbani, who persuaded the PML-Q protesters to return to the house, called their action as merely “point-scoring by those whose hands are drenched in the blood of Balochistan people” and who defended President Musharraf’s orders such as those for the killing of Baloch leader Akbar Khan Bugti.
He called the alleged manhandling of Senator Abbasi by NAB officials as “high-handedness” while many members from both sides of the house, including opposition leader Kamil Ali Agha, protested against the incident and called for the passage of a resolution immediately for the disbandment of NAB.
FIRST LEGISLATION: The day’s sitting was also marked by a unanimous passage of a bill piloted by Mr Rabbani in the absence of Labour and Manpower Minister Khurshid Ahmed Shah that sought to restore trade union activities in the Pakistan International Airlines by repealing a 2001 presidential order that was protected by the controversial 17th Amendment to the Constitution.
On Mr Rabbani’s persuasion, the opposition agreed to support the Pakistan International Airline Corporation (Suspension of the Trade Unions and Existing Agreements) Order (Repeal) Bill, which seeks fresh registration of the unions and associations in the national carrier, leading to its passage immediately after its introduction, by suspending rules requiring its reference to a standing committee.
The bill, which must be passed by the National Assembly to become law, was the first legislation of the four-month-old coalition government to be passed by a house of parliament.