Panama Papers’ bill: Senate panel defers meeting on quorum quandary

ISLAMABAD: A crucial meeting of the Senate’s Standing Committee on Law and Justice, set to discuss the opposition’s bill on Panama Papers, was deferred on Thursday till the body’s next sitting because most of the movers were absent: only two of 38 were in attendance.

It is presumed that the next meeting will now be held in the first week of November. The bill, tabled by the joint opposition titled ‘The Panama Papers Inquiries Bill 2016’, was referred to the committee on September 26. It is dubbed by the government ‘person-centric’ and deemed it as aiming to solely target the Prime Minister and his family.

Chairman of the committee informed the members that Leader of the Opposition in Senate Aitzaz Ahsan had requested him to postpone the meeting till Friday (today) because of pressing personal engagements.

When the chairman sought committee members’ opinion about holding the meeting on Friday (today), PML-N Senator Saleem Zia objected, saying majority of the legislators would leave for their home towns and the meeting would not be possible. Law Minister Zahid Hamid informed the chair that he would be abroad between October 16 and 22.



PML-N Senator Nihal Hashmi intervened, saying he, along with a Senate delegation, would be on a foreign trip between October 23 and November 5.

PPP Senator Taj Haider said the Senate’s secretariat had been informed in time about Aitzaz Ahsan’s absence. According to him, the Senate secretariat and other movers of the bill had also been informed that the discussion on the bill would not be possible on Thursday. “We came totally prepared to discuss the bill,” Law Minister Zahid Hamid told the media persons after the meeting. He criticised the bill and termed it discriminatory.

“The opposition is trying to implicate the Prime Minister in the issue contrary to the fact he owns no offshore firm as was revealed in Panama Papers,” he reiterated.

Praising the bill tabled by the government, he said unlike the opposition’s bill, its scope was not limited to information contained in Panama Papers. Hamid said the bill had already been approved by the National Assembly’s Standing Committee on Law and Justice.

From the opposition’s side only Senators Taj Haider and Muktiar Ahmad Dhamrah attended the meeting. While from government’s side, Senator Saleem Zia, Nihal Hashmi, Aisha Raza Farooq and Law Minister Zahid Hamid attended the meeting.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 14^th, 2016.