From Presidency to PM House
Thursday, April 01, 2010
History made as parliamentary panel signs draft of 18th Amendment ; Reforms package proposes transfer of powers to parliament;repeal of concurrent list; agreement on seventh judge; NWFP to be renamed Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa; removal of Ziaul Haq’s name
By Asim Yasin
ISLAMABAD: History was made at 10.50 pm on Wednesday when the Mian Raza Rabbani-led Parliamentary Committee on Constitutional Reforms (PCCR) signed the draft of the 18th Amendment to delete the dictatorial amendments from the Constitution and to strengthen the parliamentary system with the transfer of powers from the Presidency to parliament and the Prime Minister House.
Comprising 95 amendments to the repeatedly tampered Constitution, the proposed amendment draft of the non-partisan Parliamentary Committee on Constitutional reforms has already been dubbed as the best constitutional thing to happen since the 1973 consensus Constitution, incidentally also given with a Pakistan People’s Party government in the saddle.
All the committee members had reached an agreement on 93 proposed amendments but a deadlock had persisted between the PML-N and the ANP over the issues of renaming of NWFP and between the PML-N and the PPP over the thorny matter of a few remaining niggles in the process of appointing judges to the superior judiciary. With both issues finally removed under immense public and media pressure by Wednesday morning, it was time for all the parliamentary parties to finally agree on something other than disagreeing with one another.
The NWFP is now Khyber-Pakhtunkwa, and PML-N has its wish of the chief justice appointing a retired Supreme Court judge as the seventh member of the judicial commission, the tipping vote by its estimation. But what matters is that everyone got what they wanted and the nation can look forward to a Constitution detoxified of various dictatorial incursions.
However, the PML-Q rejected the name of “Khyber-Pukhtunkhwa” while suggesting the name of “Sarhad” and also submitted a dissenting note. The committee reached a consensus on the draft of the 18th Amendment following detailed deliberations lasting nine months and authoring 95 amendments in approximately 70 articles of the Constitution.
Three schedules and an annexure have been included in the proposed constitutional package. The draft proposes removal of dictatorial amendments; ensures provincial autonomy through removal of the concurrent list and other measures, purging the name of dictator General Ziaul Haq from the Constitution (why Musharraf was left out is an interesting query indeed).
The 27 members of the committee, representing all the political groups having representation in the two houses of parliament, affixed their signatures on the constitutional package’s draft in the ceremony held at the Committee Room of the Parliament House.
Federal Minister for Water and Power Raja Pervaiz Ashraf was the first one to sign the draft followed by Syed Naveed Qamar, Dr Babar Awan, Haji Lashkari Raisani, Ishaq Dar, Sardar Mehtab Ahmed Khan Abbasi, Wasim Sajjad, S M Zafar, Humayun Saifullah, Dr Farooq Sattar, Haider Abbass Rizvi, Ahsan Iqbal, Afrasyab Khattak, Haji Muhammad Adeel, RehmatUallah Kakar, Abdul Razaq Taheem, Mir Israr Ullah Zehri, Professor Khursheed Ahmed, Hasil Bizenjo, Aftab Ahmed Khan Sherpao, Abdul Rahim Mandokhel, Shahid Bugti, Munir Khan Orakzai with the Committee Chairman, Raza Rabbani putting his signature at the very end.
During the signing ceremony, CRC members hailed Rabbani’s efforts in getting a consensus on the recommendations for constitutional amendment and running the committee’s nine-month-long business smoothly and keeping all of its members onboard at every step. Secretary National Assembly Karamat Hussain Nizami and Secretary Senate Raja Muhammad Amin also signed the draft for the constitutional reforms.
Speaking after the signing ceremony, Chairman of the Parliamentary Committee on Constitutional Reforms Mian Raza Rabbani said details of the proposed recommendations for amendments to the Constitution would not be made public before presentation to the National Assembly and the Senate.
He said the committee had a difficult task before it but its accomplishment is reflective of the fact that elected representatives can develop consensus on the basis of mutual understanding and dialogue keeping national interest upper-most in their mind.
Mian Raza Rabbani thanked the nation, members of the committee, the political leadership and the media for playing a constructive role during the deliberations of the committee. He said the members of the committee kept aside their party affiliations and played their role in accordance with national interests. When asked just after the signing ceremony about the presentation of the report in parliament, Mian Raza Rabbani said, “This is still to the decided”.
But the sources said it is likely that the draft for the 18th Amendment would be presented in the National Assembly and Senate on Friday while the process of legislation is likely to start from next Tuesday, following the president’s address to the joint session on Monday.
The Rabbani committee had proposed amendments in the constitution while in 1985 former President General Ziaul Haq through the notorious 8th Amendment had amended over 90 articles while another dictator General (retd) Pervez Musharraf through his dictatorial 17th Amendment amended 26 articles of the Constitution.
In the current instance all the amendments were made through consensus and even the dissenting notes of a few of members were made part of the committee report. Interestingly, there is a similarity between the work of the committee that drafted the 1973 Constitution and the Raza Rabbani-led committee as at that time the then law minister Abdul Hafeez Peerzada led the committee in which all shades of political opinion in parliament were represented and the same is the case with the Raza Rabbani committee.
It was also a coincidence that S M Zafar, who was a member of the Raza Rabbani committee, was adviser to the opposition in 1973 and was involved in the drafting of the Constitution while Ghous Bakhsh Bizenjo, the father of member of the Rabbani committee Hasil Bizenjo, had signed the 1973 Constitution.
Interestingly S M Zafar was a key man in drafting the 17th Amendment and was involved in talks with the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal in 2003 and now again played an important role in its undoing.
