ISLAMABAD: Despite its reservations that were not pressed at the time, the government on Tuesday allowed the introduction in the National Assembly of an opposition member’s private bill designed to create a right for every citizen — rather than only the federal government — to initiate a trial for high treason. Presently this right rests with any person delegated by the federal government under the High Treason (Punishment) Act of 1973, which the bill of PML-N member Khurram Dastgir Khan seeks to be amended to provide that a provincial “high court shall take cognizance of an offence under this act upon a complaint in writing made by any citizen” of Pakistan.
Law, Justice and Parliamentary Affairs Minister Babar Awan did not oppose the introduction of the bill — as he did about five other private bills brought on the first private members’ day on the second day of the new session — though he told the house that at least three Pakistan Penal Code sections allowed such complaints and that the draft of PML-N member, who said former military president Pervez Musharraf was his immediate target, would exclude a lower trial court as had happened in the trials of independence struggle hero Bhagat Singh and former prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto.
The minister rejected the bill author’s assertion that the PPP-led federal government lacked the resolve to move against retired general Musharraf, now living abroad after stepping down from nine years of power in 2008, for alleged high treason, which punishable with up to a death sentence, and said about the PML-N: “Let them file a complaint against the former dictator, we have no objection.”
He pointed out that the PPP had gone to court to challenge the toppling of its three governments — first of Mr Bhutto in a military coup in 1977 and later of military-backed removals of assassinated party leader Benazir Bhutto in the 1990s.
He said the PML-N should also have challenged the ouster of its leader Nawaz Sharif by then army chief General Musharraf, without referring to a legal challenge then by a PML-N member, Zafar Ali Shah, upon which a Supreme Court bench, of which present Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry was a member, upheld the Oct 12, 1999, coup. Mr Dastgir’s bill is likely to face an uncertain future in the house standing committee on law and justice because of the government’s reservations and possible opposition from at least one opposition party, the PML-Q of former Musharraf loyalists, whose Khyber Pakhtunkhwa provincial chapter president, Amir Muqam, used a point of order to ridicule the PML-N member’s move as a futile exercise at a time when the country faced pressing issues like its worst flood disaster.
“NO CONSPIRACY”: Mr Muqam used the occasion also to reject propaganda in some sections of the media about an alleged conspiracy against the present government as well as a newspaper report about his recent meetings with Chief of the Army Staff General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani.
“This is no service to the nation and the country to spread such sensationalism,” Mr Muqam remarked, though he said he was not satisfied with the government’s performance.
He was the only man in the house to talk about the apparently inspired talk of some unexplained behind-the-scene moves against the government during two days of the session, as many members from both sides of the house used time after private legislative business on the second to talk on points of order about problems of flood-affected people in their provinces or constituencies such as those related to provision of relief.
The PML-Q member said he had been meeting with military authorities in connection the fight against militancy and the flood disaster whenever they visited Swat and had no other meetings with them.
Some PPP and PML-Q members from Punjab accused the provincial government led by the PML-N of discriminating against their constituencies in surveys of flood-hit areas by the revenue department for the purposes of relief and rehabilitation and some from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa also complained that Peshawar, Swat and Dera Ismail Khan districts were not yet cited among the flood-affected areas in such reports.
Interior Minister Rehman Malik, whose ministry is involved in the matter as in-charge of the National Database and Registration Authority that issues relief-related Watan Cards, assured the house that all complaints would be taken up with the provincial governments and rectified and that the government would ensure transparency in relief distribution.
Prime minister’s adviser Nawabzada Ghazanfar Gul also asked members to “give us your complaints if there are irregularities and we will try to redress them”. PML-Q member Kishen Chand Parwani made a passionate complaint about alleged looting of “crores of rupees” by unspecified people from flood-affected members of his Hindu minority community in Kashmore town of Sindh for three days as well as abduction of a five-year-old child and demanded protection and compensation for them.
PPP member Nawab Yusuf Talpur too reiterated his oft-stated complaints about alleged “day-to-day excesses” against minorities in Sindh as he told the house that unlike other provinces relief through “(Benazir) Income Support Programme had not been started in Sindh” and called for writing off agricultural loans in the flood-hit areas.
PML-N’s Rashid Akbar Nirwani said that 95 per cent of flood sufferers of his Bhakkar district in Punjab had not been given while about the same proportion of unaffected people had been given Watan Cards.
PPP information secretary Fauzia Wahab accused the Punjab government of facilitating the operation of Jamaatud Dawa despite a UN ban on the organisation as an alleged front for the banned Lashkar-e-Taiba militant group and condemned publication of what she called advertisements about their relief work in two national dailies.
Only four of the five other private bills were introduced after one by another PML-N member, Naseer Bhutta, was blocked by a negative voice vote by his own party.
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