PTI govt guards its authority to sign foreign pacts

Law minister says bill against principle of trichotomy of powers

ISLAMABAD: The government has opposed ‘The Ratification of Foreign Agreements by Parliament Bill, 2018’, which envisages seeking approval of parliament for signing contracts with foreign countries.

During a meeting of the Senate Standing Committee on Law and Justice chaired by Senator Javed Abbasi on Thursday, Minister for Law Farogh Nasim said, “Article 173/3 of the Constitution gives the executive the right to sign such contracts. A bill like this is against the principle of trichotomy of powers.”

Senator Raza Rabbani had moved the bill, which according to him, would make the process more transparent.

Rabbani said parliaments of 16 countries in the world approve such contracts.

The law minister replied, “If you want parliament to approve contracts, an amendment will have to be made to the Constitution.”

Senator Sherry Rehman said, “I support the bill but in order to get this through first a Constitutional Amendment is needed. We need to respond to the need of this bill.”

The Senate standing committee decided to discuss the bill further in the next meeting.

The committee also discussed ‘The Islamabad High Court (Amendment) Bill, 2019’ for increasing the number of judges from seven to 10.

The law minister said, “Over time the IHC has emerged as a court getting more and more cases and has evolved in different respects. With more courts, the number of judges also needs to be increased to overcome the pendency in cases.”

Senator Farooq Naek said, “The existing positions of judges are not filled entirely and increase in number will be of no use until all vacancies are also filled.”

Chairman Abbasi said there should also be a decision on who can be appointed as a judge in IHC. The IHC Bar Council and IHC Bar Association supported the bill but called for making the number of judges 11 instead of 10 and making it mandatory that the judges be from Islamabad.

The committee members supported the increase in number and hence the bill but decided to pend passing the bill till the next meeting.

The law minister assured the committee that the government would bring an amendment to the IHC Act regarding bar on appointment of judges from areas other than Islamabad. The committee in principle agreed with the amendment bill under discussion but asked the ministry to initiate the process for amendment in the High Court Act and bring the same in the next meeting before passing this bill.