ISLAMABAD: The calls for change in the National Assembly are not restricted to the leader of the house – the prime minister.

The Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-Fazl (JUI-F) on Thursday is said to have has ‘advised’ Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) to replace Opposition Leader in the National Assembly Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan with some ‘reasonable’ person if it wants to succeed in its plan to form a grand anti-government alliance.

The advice, according to officials in both parties, was conveyed by JUI–F chief Maulana Fazlur Rehman to a two-member delegation of the PML-N that held a meeting with him on Thursday.

The meeting between Fazl and PML-N leaders — Senator Ishaq Dar and MNA Sardar Mehtab Ahmed Khan Abbasi — took place after an exchange of harsh statements between Nisar and the JUI-F leadership.

The interaction lasted for one hour, after which both sides tried to give an impression that they had resolved their differences amicably and wanted to work together in the future.

But the anger was visible from both sides’ statements after the meeting.

“I feel hurt by the statement of Chaudhry Nisar about my party… he should not have used such words against us,” Fazl said, commenting on the leader of the opposition assertion that the JUI-F was playing a ‘dubious’ role in the committee that will appoint a new Chief Election Commissioner (CEC).

“The government will take advantage of divisions in the opposition,” Fazl added.

What followed was even clearer. The officials of his party were more hostile in their statements.

“We don’t recognise him (Nisar) as opposition leader. He is not worthy of the position. He is a spoiler and has been a cause for the opposition being in disarray in four years,” Maulana Amjad Khan, the spokesperson for Fazl, told The Express Tribune. Maulana Ghafoor Haideri also came up with a similar statement, saying Nisar was a person behind the bickering of opposition groups.

A couple of PML-N leaders privy to the meeting also confirmed this, but did not want to be named. Sardar Mehtab Abbasi could not be contacted on his mobile despite several attempts.

The controversy between the two opposition groups was triggered by JUI-F’s decision to vote in favour of the government’s candidate for chairman of a parliamentary committee on the appointment of a new CEC.

JUI-F’s Maulana Ghafoor Haideri voted in favour of Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) leader Religious Affairs Minister Syed Khursheed Shah when the 12-member panel elected him chairman on Tuesday.

Nisar reacted angrily, arguing that Haideri should not have voted for the government candidate because he was the member of the panel on the opposition’s strength. He threatened to write a letter to Speaker National Assembly Dr Fehmida Mirza to replace Haideri with another PML-N member. In the 12-strong body has five members from the PML-N – but Haideri’s vote was decisive to help PPP elect its nominee.

The appointment of the new CEC is key in the country’s fluid political horizon not only in the context of the next parliamentary polls but also because the person appointed to the position could be deciding the fate of Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani in the aftermath of his conviction by the Supreme Court in a contempt case.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 18^th, 2012.

During a meeting, the 13-member bipartisan, bicameral panel decided to forward the government two separate sets of recommendations – legislative and administrative – to sort out one of Pakistan’s most complicated human rights issues.

A participant told The Express Tribune, after the meeting, that the panel decided to toughen laws not only to bring intelligence agencies under civilian control but also to make sure that detained terrorists could not escape due to weak prosecution or lack of evidence.

On the administrative side, he said, the committee would recommend what and how provincial governments should take measures to address a widespread dissent of the state in Balochistan and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa.

The committee’s recommendations, which are likely to be finalised at a meeting on May 28, will be aimed at finding out how to trace thousands of people who had gone ‘missing’ in different parts of the country over the past few years.

The decision to amend laws to control secret and law enforcing agencies came days after the Supreme Court observed that the Frontier Constabulary (FC) was behind more than 90% of enforced disappearances in Balochistan.

The idea to split recommendations into legislative and administrative measure was taken from a similar attempt made during the era of former military ruler General (retd) Pervez Musharraf to address Balochistan’s problems.

A parliamentary panel he formed back in 2005 split itself into administrative and legislative sub-committees to seek a solution of the problems in the province where a nationalist insurgency was threatening the integrity of the country.

But before the committee could make any headway after months of deliberations, the killing of Baloch chieftain Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti in a military operation threw the province into further chaos.

“We want to pick the thread where it was left in 2006 … the idea will be to build on the recommendations were finalized then,” said one of the participants about the administrative measures.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 18^th, 2012.

The 12-member Parliamentary Committee on the Appointment of CEC elected Religious Affairs Minister Khurshid Shah as its head after Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-Fazl (JUI-F)’s Ghafoor Haideri – one of the six opposition members – voted in his favour.

The Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), meanwhile, finalised three names for the post which will be formally put before the committee by Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan, the opposition leader in the National Assembly, sources told The Express Tribune.

According to sources, PML-N supremo Nawaz Sharif, after consulting his party’s legal cell and lawyers, approved the names of Acting CEC Justice Shakirullah Jan, Justice (retd) Ghulam Rabbani and Justice (retd) Sardar Raza Khan.

The PPP had proposed the names of Justice (retd) Munir A Sheikh, Justice (retd) Amirul Mulk Mengal and Justice (retd) Qurban Alvi for the crucial post which could ultimately decide the fate of Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani who has been convicted by the apex court in a contempt case.

Parliamentary meeting proceedings

On Tuesday, the body rejected PML-N’s demand to rotate the chairmanship between the government and the opposition.

In the bi-cameral panel, the PML-N has five and the JUI-F one member, while three belong to the PPP and one each from its three coalition partners — Muttahida Qaumi Movement, Awami National Party and Pakistan Muslim League-Quaid.

JUI-F’s Haideri, who is currently hospitalised, did not attend the meeting and casted his vote through a letter, which swung the balance in favour of the ruling coalition.

“It’s not a big deal. Election of the chairman doesn’t really make any difference. The real issue is whether the committee can appoint a new CEC or not,” said PML-N member Lt Gen (retd) Abdul Qadir Baloch.

Obstacles

The PPP and the PML-N have different interpretations of the procedure of appointing CEC laid down in the 20th Constitutional Amendment passed by parliament earlier this year.

The ruling party says the committee needs to approve one of the three names sent to it with a simple majority. It means the PPP can have a candidate of its choice with the JUI-F voting in its favour.

However, the opposition thinks otherwise.

Chaudhry Nisar has said that according to Rules of Procedures and Conduct of Business in the National Assembly 2007, the committee is required to approve a name with a two-thirds majority, and not simple majority.

PML-N’s strategy

According to PML-N’s strategy, the party wants any one of the names it has nominated for the post. They said that according to the Constitution, only the committee could decide the final name but they did not trust JUI-F’s Haidri. Keeping that in mind, sources said that the party has decided focus on the rules of the procedure’s two-thirds majority clause.

PPP’s strategy

Although the PPP has apparently failed to succeed in appointing Justice Munir Sheikh as the new CEC, it has devised another strategy.

According to sources, since the coalition’s six members plus JUI-F’s vote does not make two-thirds majority, the PPP has decided to amend the rule of procedure in the coming week.

And for this purpose, according to sources, the government has asked the law ministry to prepare a draft for amendment.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 16^th, 2012.

“The commission will send a formal request to the premier to have a meeting with its members when he comes back from his London trip,” an official privy to the Abbottabad Commission proceedings told The Express Tribune on Sunday.

“Yousaf Raza Gilani was the chief executive of the country at the time when Osama bin Laden was taken out by American commandos… He must have something important to share with us,” the official quoted one of the commission members as saying.

“His is going to be a very crucial statement and we would like to hear from him.”

Commandos of the US Navy, known as SEALs, raided a housing compound in Abbottabad on May 2, 2011 and killed the al Qaeda chief who had been living there for more than five years.

The government subsequently formed a five-member judicial commission to probe the presence of the world’s most-wanted man close to Pakistan’s premier military training facility and the circumstances leading to his death in a night raid by US troops.

The commission was due to submit its report by the end of 2011 but is still struggling to finalise the investigations reportedly because of “indecision” on whether to hold somebody from within the Pakistani political or military leadership responsible.

The revelation that the commission wanted to record the premier’s statement comes weeks after it was reported that the judicial body was likely to partially blame Gilani for the raid.

It was on his orders, according to reports, that former Pakistan ambassador to the US Husain Haqqani issued visas to several hundred operators of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) who tracked down the al Qaeda leader.

But the commission denied these reports in a statement the next day. It was reported last week that the commission was also waiting for replies to a set of questions it sent to President Asif Ali Zardari more than two months ago.

A member of the commission also clarified that the questions sent to Zardari were not sent bearing in mind that he was the head of the state but the chief of a political party.

The judicial body has interviewed heads and representatives of almost every political party to ‘seek their suggestions’.

Reports also surfaced suggesting the completion of the report was highly unlikely by the end of this month as announced earlier.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 14^th, 2012.

Troop withdrawal to peacetime positions is among the first substantial overtures since India and Pakistan resumed peace talks following the terror strike in 2008 that had almost triggered a full-scale war.

Military and diplomatic officials told The Express Tribune on Sunday that the two nuclear-armed nations had reached an understanding on this during last month’s visit to New Delhi by President Asif Ali Zardari.

A formal announcement in this regard, they added, was likely when the Indian premier visits Islamabad possibly during the later half of this year. “It is going to happen in September or October,” one of them remarked.

Political figures privy to the president’s daylong visit to India on April 8 said the major development was a result of backdoor channels, which had been active between the two countries for the past couple of years.

Officials said that in July 2008, the Indian government had immediately mobilized troops to take wartime positions at the working boundary with Pakistan immediately after terrorists launched commando-style attacks in the heart of Indian commercial capital of Mumbai. The term working boundary relates to disputed border particularly
in Kashmir.

New Delhi blamed the attacks on Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT), a group based in Pakistan. More than 160 people, including foreigners, were killed in the strikes at multiple locations across the port city.

According to experts, in wartime scenario, regular army starts manning border instead of special-forces meant for protecting boundaries. India has Border Security Forces and Pakistan has rangers for this purpose.

Officials said Pakistan responded to Indian move in 2008 by sending troops to concentration areas—forward basis—along with the working boundary at Sialkot and some other locations.

A senior military official said that though troops were mobilised by India, there wasn’t any serious tension at the border like in 2002 after an attack on Indian parliament also blamed on a group based in Pakistan.

“There has never been an alert. Neither on our side nor on the other,” said the military official.

Defence experts argue the move will provide Pakistan a space to deploy more troops in the north of the country where the military is busy fighting al Qaeda and homegrown Taliban.

The United States and other western nations fighting an insurgency in Afghanistan want Pakistan to curb terrorists on its soil.

Siachen, Sir Creek disputes

Besides pulling back troops, Manmohan Singh visit might carry other ‘pleasant’ surprises for Pakistan and India.

Officials said ‘major announcements’ were also expected on Siachen—the disputed glacier in the Himalayas known as world’s highest battlefield—and Sir Creek — an un-demarcated stretch of coastline dotted with small islands.

They said there was a possibly that both sides might agree on troop withdrawal from the killing mountainous range where an avalanche buried more that 130 soldiers and civilians last month.

Pakistani civilian and military leaders including Chief of the Army Staff General Ashfaq Pervez Kayani have more than once said both countries should withdraw troops from the border to divert resources to public welfare.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 14^th, 2012.

Opinions seem divided over the issue, mainly because there are doubts whether or not the article is even relevant in the wake of the Supreme Court’s conviction of Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani in a contempt case.

The constitutional clause in question explicitly says the premier, members of federal and provincial cabinets and chief ministers are not answerable to any court for the exercise of powers and performance of functions of their respective offices.

PPP officials told The Express Tribune on Friday that Law Minister Farooq H Naek and some other lawyers, who were part of the prime minister’s defence team, argued that the speaker still has the right to overrule the court’s verdict based on her own interpretation of article 248 (1).

However, the prime minister’s chief defence counsel Barrister Chaudhry Aitzaz Ahsan does not subscribe to this view.

His argument is that the question of immunity for the prime minister could have been raised during the trial and it won’t be appropriate for the speaker to base her rejection of Gilani’s disqualification matter on the basis of article 248 (1).

Some PPP legal experts have been advising President Asif Ali Zardari at informal meetings since the conviction of Gilani that if the speaker rejects his disqualification matter and doesn’t send any reference to the Election Commission, it cannot be challenged in any court of law.

According to their interpretation, the rejection by the speaker on the basis of 248 (1) would close the chapter of the premier’s disqualification once and for all.

But Aitzaz is still unconvinced. His point of view is that the rejection by the speaker after the conviction would trigger another confrontation between the government and the judiciary, which might complicate the situation further.

He said the question of immunity for the premier might be raised once a larger bench starts hearing the appeal against Gilani’s conviction.

The government has the right to file the appeal till May 26. But opinion in the PPP is once again divided on whether they should go for this option or not.

According to Naek and his associates, the ambiguity in the verdict on the disqualification is the best bet for the speaker to interpret the matter in a way that suits Gilani.

And in case of appeal, they feared, the court might come up with a clear order on the premier’s disqualification. The PPP is likely to craft its final strategy early next week.

Constitutional experts such as Farough Nasim and Akram Sheikh believe that the speaker may not have the right to invoke article 248 (1). “She will be guilty of obstructing justice and may face contempt charges as well,” said Sheikh.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 12^th, 2012.

However, the final decision regarding filing an appeal in the Supreme Court would be taken by Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani himself after he returns from a five-day tour to the United Kingdom, party officials and members of his legal team told The Express Tribune.

“I can’t say anything about the appeal at the moment… Gilani Sahib will decide about it himself,” said Barrister Aitzaz Ahsan, the chief defence counsel for the premier in the contempt of court case which declared Gilani guilty last month.

Aitzaz, however, refused to answer when asked what his personal opinion was about filing an appeal. “I’ll give my point of view to the premier, not to media,” stated the lawyer who is also one of the key PPP leaders and a member of the Senate.

About the difference of opinion within the ruling party on the issue, he said the final decision would be taken after reaching a consensus.

This new position of apparent silence was in sharp contradiction of the party’s original plans of immediately filing an appeal once the detailed verdict is out.

However, no reason was given for this change of heart.

At least a couple PPP leaders said the party was not interested in filing the appeal because it thought the decision would not be different than the detailed verdict issued by the Supreme Court earlier in the day.

“We know it will not make any difference,” said one of the officials close to President Asif Ali Zardari. Another confirmed the party’s reservations regarding filing an appeal.

There was, however, no official word by the PPP in response to the detailed verdict by the court in the contempt case. Officials said Zardari had called Speaker of the National Assembly Dr Fehmida Mirza to reach Islamabad as soon as possible.

Dr Mirza’s role in this episode remains crucial since she is the one who has to decide whether or not to send a reference to the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) for the disqualification of premier Gilani.

A lawyer in the premier’s defence team claimed that the decision of the speaker regarding the disqualification would be final and could not be challenged in any court.

Insiders said she was likely to announce that the prime minister was immune against any criminal charge under Article 248 (1) of the Constitutional and, therefore, no reference would be sent to the ECP.

There was a hint of this in a statement issued by Fawad Chaudhry, the premier’s special assistant and member of his defence team.

“Detail judgment is prima facie violative of Article 248 (1) of the Constitution under which the prime minister of Pakistan has complete immunity in discharge of its official functions,” said Chaudhry.

He added under Article 62 (2), the decision of the speaker regarding the qualification or disqualification of premier Gilani would be final and could not be called in question in any court.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 9^th, 2012.

Officials privy to the proceedings of the Abbottabad Commission said on Tuesday the probe body had asked heads of all political parties, including the ruling Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), to respond to its queries regarding the incident.

US commandos raided a compound in Abbottabad on May 2, 2011 to capture the former al Qaeda chief who had been living there for more than five years.

The government subsequently formed a five-member judicial commission to probe the presence of Bin Laden so close to Pakistan’s premier military training facility and the circumstances leading to his death in the raid by US troops.

The commission was due to submit its report by the end of last year but is still struggling to finalise it reportedly due to reluctance on whether to hold somebody from within the Pakistani political or military leadership responsible.

Officials said questions were sent to President Zardari not as head of the state but as chief of a political party; however, an answer is still awaited, with the PPP arguing that by virtue of being the president, Zardari is immune from being present before any commission.

Officials at the presidency, however, denied having received any correspondence from the commission. The PPP secretariat in Islamabad also did not confirm that it received any letter from the probe body for its chief.

Chairman of the Abbottabad commission Justice (retd) Javed Iqbal announced in December to send questions to the president and asked the heads of other parties to personally appear before the body to record their statements.

But except for a few, heads of nearly all the major political groups did not personally appear before the committee and were instead represented by other members.

The PPP immediately said it was not binding on its leaders to appear before the commission and no one from the party represented President Zardari before the judicial body.

Officials said the commission was likely to mention this factor as one of the reasons for the probe’s delay when it finally comes up with the report possibly by the end of this month.

When contacted, both the chairman of the commission and Presidential spokesperson Senator Farhatullah Babar were not available for comment.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 9^th, 2012.

ISLAMABAD: Apparently gaining heart from Saturday’s rally in Taxila to mark the beginning of its anti-government campaign, the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) has decided to go ahead with a ‘solo flight’ instead of with the original idea of forming a grand opposition alliance.       

The main opposition party seems to have given up on plans to seek long-term political cooperation with Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) chairperson Imran Khan. The group has decided not to take any formal step to build on an announcement by PML-N President Nawaz Sharif to approach all political forces hostile to the government including Khan’s party for its mass movement.

Last week, the PML-N unveiled a plan for a series of rallies across major cities of Punjab and vowed to culminate the campaign with a long march on Islamabad to push for the ouster of Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani after his conviction by the Supreme Court in a contempt case.

A spokesperson for the PML-N told The Express Tribune on Sunday the party would not contact Imran for a joint struggle against the government because his condition of resigning from the assemblies was ‘too tough to be accepted’ at least for now.

“Mian Sahib wholeheartedly and sincerely announced that the PML-N will approach PTI … But the very next day Khan came up with a resignation demand. It is not possible for us to be dictated to like that,” said MNA Khurram Dastgir Khan, the opposition party’s deputy information secretary.

Though the MNA from Gujranwala did not give any other reason for shying away from Imran, insiders said the decision was a result of the outcome of Saturday’s rally in Taxila which, according to critics, was an impressive show.

“We have gained a lot of heart from the success of our first rally … we’re hoping to keep up the momentum and don’t think cooperation from Imran is needed anymore,” a party leader said from Lahore.

He said there was an informal session in Lahore in which the main opposition party assessed its Taxila rally and reviewed plans for future events scheduled for this and next week. “We now think we can do it alone,” the official said, who was aware of the discussion at the meeting.

But Dastgir said the PML-N was continuing talks with other opposition groups including Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-Fazl (JUI-F) and Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) to forge long-term cooperation with them leading up to the next general elections.

He, however, did not reveal who was spearheading negotiations with the fellow rightwing parties and what their response had been so far.

JUI-F wasn’t forthcoming when Sharif announced the launch of a mass movement against the government, advising him to wait for the Supreme Court’s detailed verdict for clarity on Gilani’s disqualification.

The JI was the only religious party that apparently accepted Sharif’s offer of cooperation but its leaders were not present at the Taxila rally.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 7^th, 2012.

The opposition leader in the National Assembly, PML-N’s Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan, will dispatch a series of letters to government functionaries, diplomats, think-tanks and those who hold important constitutional offices. The purpose of the letters is to “remind” the recipients about the conviction of Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani, which, according to the PML-N, disqualifies him from the office.

The first batch of these letters was dispatched on Friday to Speaker National Assembly Fehmida Mirza and Deputy Speaker Faisal Karim Kundi, urging them to be impartial.

“The sanctity of the offices you hold demands you to be impartial and fair to all parties. You, however, have not been,” state the letters, the contents of which were shared by Chaudhry Nisar with the media outside the Parliament House.

Last week, the PML-N accused Mirza of being partial when she “leaked” a letter sent to her by the deputy registrar of the Supreme Court about the short order against Prime Minister Gilani to members of her party.

Mirza, however, maintains that her role with regard to the premier’s disqualification will begin only after the court’s detailed verdict.

Nisar told the media that he has also reminded the speaker and deputy speaker about the resolution seeking the creation of four new provinces that the PML-N submitted to her office on Thursday.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 5^th, 2012.