Wednesday, 15 Apr, 2009 | 02:09 AM PST |
The NA receives a flurry of private bills after the house voted to appease the terror-stricken region’s militants.—APP/File
ISLAMABAD: The government shrugged off controversy over the enforcement of Sharia in the Malakand division of the North West Frontier Province as the National Assembly received a flurry of private bills on Tuesday, a day after the house voted to appease the terror-stricken region’s militants.
While eight bills were introduced and as many deferred for various reasons, most attention was focused on the 24 seats of the government ally Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) in the 342-seat house that remained empty for the day because of an apparent protest over Monday’s vote that asked President Asif Ali Zardari to approve a controversial Sharia regulation to secure a provincial government’s peace deal with the militants of Swat valley.
The MQM law-makers stayed away from the house to be in Karachi power base to ponder their future in the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP)-led coalition as the government said the president had authorised NWFP governor Owais Ghani to enforce the Sharia Nizam-i-Adl Regulation 2009 in the troubled area.
The president had signed the regulation on Monday night soon after the National Assembly vote on a government-moved resolution, which was boycotted by the MQM but which won a unanimous support from all the other parties ranging from the left-of-centre PPP, right-wing Pakistan Muslim League-N and Pakistan Muslim League-Q, left-wing and nationalist Awami National Party and hardline religious Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam.
An outburst from a prominent but estranged PPP member confirmed differences within the ruling party over the issue though none of its law-makers dared to say no to Monday’s presidential move that seemed aimed to share blame with all the parties in case the peace deal is flouted by the militants blamed for committing atrocities like massacring their opponents, prohibiting women from education and work, and banning music and shaving of beard.
But government seemed to ignore the fears voiced by its former information and broadcasting minister Sherry Rehman about what she called the shadow of wrongs done to women and men of Swat being cast over the whole country.
Speaking on a point of order, she said the ANP, which leads the NWFP’s coalition government with PPP, should be asked how it would guarantee the executive authority would not be exercised by ‘non-state actors’ like militants whom security forces had failed to eliminate.
She wanted to know the fate of an adjournment motion she had file for a debate on the reported Taliban public flogging of a 17-year-old women for going out of her house with her father-in-law as shown in a video-tape aired by several private television channels, whose authenticity was questioned by the provincial government.
‘Who will protect the people there?’ she asked and said: ‘The problem is that where is writ of your state.’
Ms Rehman, who was regarded as a person of considerable influence in the government before she resigned as minister and PPP information secretary last month to protest over alleged interference in her ministry by some other ministers, had to struggle for time put her views across while Deputy Speaker Faisal Karim Kundi tried to cut her short as she called for admission of her adjournment motion.
Even Parliamentary Affairs Minister Babar Awan offered her no comfort, saying the matter she called a ‘key issue’ could not be raised through a point of order.
CAPITAL SECURITY CRACKDOWN
In a related development, several members from the NWFP from both the opposition and the ruling coalition complained Pashtuns from their province were being particularly targeted in a security crackdown launched in Islamabad and the adjoining Rawalpindi city against feared terrorist attacks.
Former interior minister Aftab Ahmed Khan Sherpao and PML-Q member Humayun Khan Saifullah said police were harassing Pashtuns visiting or living in the two cities while a PPP member from the NWFP, Noor Alam Khan, said even parliamentarians were being subjected to humiliating searches of their vehicles.
Minister of State for Interior Tasnim Qureshi said police had orders to question only ‘suspicious’ people and not disturb ‘gentlemen’ but he promised to inform the house further after getting a report about the situation in a day or two.
Some of the eight private bills introduced in the house and referred to the concerned standing committee sought to restrict re-employments in government and semi-government departments and government-controlled autonomous bodies, amend the Pakistan Bait-ul-Mal Act of 1992, amend the Anti-Terrorism Act of 1997, extend certain facilities to children involved in criminal litigation, and amend the Oil and Gas Regulatory Authority Ordinance of 2002.
Others sought to enact a charter of child rights to promote an enabling environment free of violence, abuse and exploitation, further amend the Code of Civil Procedure, and further amend the Code of Criminal Procedure.
NEW HEALTH POLICY COMING
Health Minister Mir Aijaz Jakhrani told the house a new health policy of the government would be unveiled at the end of April or in the beginning of the next month and that it would tackle more efficiently matters like the manufacture of ‘spurious and sub-standard medicines’, which 11 members complained in a motion was happening on a large scale.
He said the policy draft had already been sent to members of standing committees on health in both the National Assembly and the Senate.
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