Parliament in Pakistan

 

Parliament in Pakistan

An astrologer's crystal ball could have hardly predicted it, but twists of events in parliament made 2006 a year of women and of an unprecedented bluff that will ring through the New Year as well. Most Of Pakistan's parliamentary year was marked by the usual periods of government-opposition tensions and fiery debates in both the National Assembly and the Senate on controversial issues ranging from tile proposed Kalabagh Dam to the scrapped sale of the Pakistan Steel Mills (PSM) and violence in Baluchistan and tribal areas bordering Afghanistan.

        It was the towards the end of the year that a legislative cum political drama began unfolding, outshining even an unsuccessful no-confidence move against Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz mainly on the PS M affair, after the government reluctantly moved a controversial women’s rights bill in an apparent move to impress domestic and foreign doubters of President Pervez Musharraf’s concept of "enlightended moderation" against the so-called Islamic extremism.

Parliament

Senate of Pakistan:

        The passage of the Protection of Women (Criminal Laws Amendment) Bill by both houses of parliament in November promised some relief to women from widely complained excesses of the controversial Zia-era Islamic Hudood laws and represented only a modest victory for them given the enormity of discrimination they have to endure in a society where religion, traditions, customs and laws are frequently used to treat them more as chattels than equal partners.

       But it became a big affair and attracted international attention because of a vicious opposition from hard line Islamic parties and some intrigues within the ruling coalition. The bill exposed rifts within the opposition and the ruling coalition, and even sparked seemingly premature speculations about a re-alignment of forces before the next elections could decide the future shape of Pakistani politics.

         The opposition was divided almost down the middle with the religious parties forming the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal (MMA) rejecting the bill as un-Islamic and threatening to resign from all their 65 seats in the National Assembly Parliamentarians (PPP) taking some political risk by voting with the government for the draft, and its one-time rival and now major ally, the Pakistan Muslim League-N, speaking against the bill but, like some other smaller groups, abstaining in the vote.

        The ruling coalition led by the Pakistan Muslim League (PML), still dominated by the one-time 'followers of General Mohammad Zia-ul-haq who imposed the Hudood ordinances in 1979, was not far behind in betraying its own internal differences. It required some repeated pep talk by, General Musharraf to check the PML leadership's apparent moves to dilute the law in order to appease the mullahs and avoid the possibility of early elections if the MMA had carried out its threat to resign.

        PML president Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain provoked a controversy within the ruling coalition by taking the issue to an extra-parliamentary committee of ulema and signing an agreement with it to introduce some far-reaching changes to dilute the bill's draft that had been approved by a special select committee, which included the PPP but was boycotted by the MMA. After the move was neutralized by a presidential intervention, the PML president opted for another contrivance by submitting his own resignation from the lower house with the condition that it be accepted if somebody could prove to him that the bill was contrary to the Quran and Sunnah. But obviously that would never happen because he would not be seen convinced, though the MMA made an abortive attempt to hold a march to his home town of Gujrat to press him to resign.

       The PML president sprang another surprise by submitting a private bill seeking more relief measures for women -- this time from such abominable practices as forced or exchanged marriages to settle blood feuds and the so-called marriages of women with the Holy Quran to deprive them of share in the parents' properties — and offering the MMA to join in his move and possibly bring their own amendments.

      Nobody remembers a ruling party leader in Pakistan ever moving a private bill instead of a channelling one's legislative ambitions through a government bill, and unless the government turns it into an official bill, Chaudhry Shujaat's move seemed unlikely to get precedence over already pending similar private bills authored by women activists from the PPP and PML.

National Assembly Seats in Pakistan:

       Although MMA's resignation bluff was called with the passage of the women's bill, the threat was still not called off though some alliance members announced their resignations in what looked like signs of an internal rift -- while the government sent the 342 — seat lower house into a meaningful recess throughout December. It seemed to be another government move to provide some face-saving to the clerics, who over the years have emerged as guardians of the ideological frontiers of the country whose creation their predecessors had opposed.

         The move was in keeping with a mutual exchange of both overt and covert favours by the two sides in recent years such as the MMA's rise in the 2002 elections mainly because President Musharraf had sought to sideline the mainstream opposition parties such as the PPP and PML-N and the MMA's support for the Seventeenth Constitution Amendment to legitimize his military presidency and all actions he took after seizing power in an October 1999 coup.

        While the MMA put off carrying out its resignation threat till after Eidal Azha falling on January 1, there were clear signs of a strong differences between the alliance's two main components — the Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam (JUI) that leads the MMA government in the North West Frontier Province and has the main share of the alliance in the Balochistan Cabinet — and the Jamaat-i-Islami (JI), which has fewer members in parliament and provincial assemblies but excels in organization. The JI seems insisting on resigning and its members have already stopped attending National Assembly's standing committees during the recess of the lower house or charging their allowances. The JUI seems less enthusiastic about resignations even after the federal government has gone to the Supreme Court to challenge the NWFP government's new showpiece Hasba Bill that provides for monitoring of Islamic practices in the province.

Speaker of National Assembly of Pakistan:

        While National Assembly Speaker Chaudhry Amir Hussain is notorious for frequently expunging remarks he sees as un-parliamentary during debates, Senate Chairman Mohammedmian Soomro's leniency saw a new high when he failed to delete a really carnal argument over the women's bill. This means that until a new ruling comes, it would be permissible to use such vocabulary in the Senate such as an elderly pro-government independent senator, Zulzar Ahmed, asking MMA parliamentary leader Maulana Gul Nasib twice for his interpretation of "illat-i-Mashaikh" (Mashaikh's bad habit) and a furious Maulana telling the questioner to join a madressah to learn this "within one night".

       The only other legislation of some note that got through both the houses earlier in August was the first private bill passed by this parliament, providing for what it called "one-dish" meal for wedding parties but actually allowed up to six items of food, including a sweet dish, apparently included in the draft by generally suspected sweet toothed authors from the MMA.

       Some political developments seen in parliament during the year included apparently closer cooperation between the PPP and PML-N after their exiled leaders and former prime ministers Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif signed a "charter of democracy" in London and the virtual death of a so-called "forward bloc" of some dissident MNAs from the Punjab Province while most members of the breakaway PPP (Patriots) seemed keen to join the ruling party before the next elections rather go along with group chief and Interior Minister Aftab Ahmed Khan Sherpao.

          Heated debates were also held on the country's foreign policy, particularly related to the military action in the Waziristan tribal area to help the US-led military campaign in Afghanistan and the recent Israeli invasion in Lebanon, as well as on the Balochistan insurgency that took some toll of some Baloch members of parliament who resigned after the killing of former provincial governor and chief minister Akbar Khan Bugti in August in a clash with security forces.

        Other issues debated included flash floods during the monsoon rains, power outages, particularly those in Karachi after the privatization of the Karachi Electric Supply Corporation, and ones on deadly missile strike on a madressah in the Bajaur tribal area that killed 83 people and an apparent retaliatory suicide bomb attack on an army parade ground at Dargai in the NWTP where 42 recruits were killed.

What a pity that a persistent malady of lack of quorum, which often broke up parliamentary sessions, deprived interior minister Sherpao an opportunity to reply to charges on the incidents in both in the National Assembly and the Senate after the opposition walked out of both houses at the end of debates.

Senate of Pakistan