NA speaker’s ruling: Legal opinion remains divided

AGP Irfan Qadir says Mirza’s decision proves SC was wrong from the beginning.

ISLAMABAD:

Legal opinion appears bitterly divided into two extremes following National Assembly Speaker Fehmida Mirza’s ruling that Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani cannot be disqualified from parliament following his conviction last month.

While some top experts hailed the decision as unchallengeable and in accordance with the true spirit of the Constitution, others argued that the speaker should not have given a ruling contradictory to a court’s verdict, adding that she could face contempt charges herself.

One aspect seemed evident though, that the decision was being interpreted more with political affiliations than on legal merits.

Prominent Supreme Court lawyer and former law minister Dr Khalid Ranjha summarised it by saying: “Like society is divided into a pro- and anti-Bhutto syndrome, so is the legal community. You will never get unbiased opinion.”

The strongest reaction came from Attorney General Irfan Qadir, who said that the speaker’s ruling proved that the Supreme Court’s verdict was wrong from the very beginning.

The court, he added, would be given a chance to correct its mistake when the government files an appeal in the case. On the other hand, Abid Hassan Minto, a Supreme Court lawyer, was among those who rejected the decision and was of the opinion that Mirza could be dragged into court for it.

“There are certain parameters within which the speaker could have operated … in any case, she would have not overruled a court’s decision, and that even of a highest one,” he said. The speaker, he added, should have forwarded the reference to the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) which, he argued, was the final authority to decide matters of disqualification.

However, Minto’s views were sharply contradicted by some of legal experts, such as SM Masood, an associate of former premier Zulfikar Ali Bhutto.

According to him, the speaker’s decision was based on the true spirit of the Constitution. He argued that in order to be disqualified, the conviction must not be for less than two years and in Premier Gilani’s case, the sentence lasted only for a few seconds.

Moreover, Masood argued, that the speaker’s decision could not be challenged in any court of law. “The decision of the speaker is the same as that of parliament… so it being challenged in any court is out of the question,” said the former law minister.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 25^th, 2012.