Showdown looms in NA over DHA bill

[Lahore_Real_Estate]

ISLAMABAD: In what could be a deceptive lull after a day of turmoil, the National Assembly quietly passed two government bills on Friday, while awaiting a potential thriller to come when it meets next on Monday.

An almost unanimous vote, without any argument on the first bills to go through the house’s current session, was in sharp contrast to Thursday’s spectacle when lawmakers of the opposition Pakistan Muslim League-N and the government-allied Muttahida Qaumi Movement nearly came to blows mainly over the Karachi-based MQM’s role in Sindh.

But the two bills — seeking to boost power generation by making the Private Power Infrastructure Board (PPIB) a statutory body and to provide for the administration of a fund by the human rights ministry to help women prisoners — are to be followed by a controversial Defence Housing Authority Bill for Islamabad that the government put off until Monday after Leader of Opposition Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan threatened on Thursday that his PML-N would block it — physically, if needed.

While voicing objections to the government agenda for the bill’s adoption on Thursday, Chaudhry Nisar had criticised the MQM as a “fascist and terrorist party”, provoking a strong response from the Muttahida, which, in turn, accused the PML-N of trying to cripple parliament by threats to block the DHA bill, which the opposition leader alleged would violate the Constitution and give a preferential treatment to a private housing society perceived to be associated with an army-run DHA having some land falling also in the Rawalpindi district of Punjab.

The chief whip of the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) and Religious Affairs Minister Khursheed Ahmed Shah then announced the deferment of the bill with a promise to bring it back on Monday after consulting the opposition as he and some other senior lawmakers intervened to disengage the PML-N and MQM in their second exchange of abusive language within four days.

There was no indication on Friday if the PPP and PML-N had come any closer to settling differences that could avoid a feared showdown on Monday on the DHA bill which has already been cleared, by majority vote, by the house standing committee on defence, which is chaired by Azra Fazal Pechuho, a sister of President Asif Ali Zardari.

Friday’s quick vote on the PPIB Bill and Women in Distress and Detention Fund (Amendment) Bill, which must now be passed by the Senate to become laws, came three days after a landmark private bill seeking to penalise anti-women practices like forced marriages and the so-called marriage with the holy Quran to deprive women of heritance was put off until the next private members’ day on Tuesday just as it was about to be passed after some lawmakers from both the opposition the PPP benches objected to perceived harshness of the intended minimum sentences and drafting flaws.

The first bill of the day, piloted by Water and Power Minister Naveed Qamar, said in an accompanying statement of objects and reasons that the new law was expected to inspire public and public sector “confidence in the authority, credibility, efficiency and permanence” of the PPIB, which was originally created under the 1994 power policy of then-PPP government to act as a “one-window operation” to attract and facilitate private investment in the sector.

It said donor agencies had “time and again” called for giving the PPIB a legal status, which it added had even been cited by the Asian Development Bank as one of its conditions for its “multi-tranche facility” to the government.

The second bill, based on a 2010 presidential ordinance, transfers to the human rights ministry the operation of what the ‘Women in Distress and Detention Fund’ established in 1996 from the defunct human rights wing of what was previously known as the ministry of law, justice and human rights.

Amid the unusual cordiality of the day after some stormy sittings of the 12 days of the present session, which has been marked by opposition protests against power cuts besides the harsh exchanges of the PML-N with the MQM and PPP, not many feathers seemed ruffled even when journalists in the press gallery staged a token walkout to protest against reported attacks on the staff of Sindhi-language daily Kawish in Hyderabad and complaints by PPP’s detained former religious affairs minister Hamid Saeed Kazmi that he had been denied medical treatment of toothache that made it hard for him to eat and by PML-N’s Ayaz Amir that some lawmakers’ development funds had not been released since the previous years despite Prime Minister
Yousuf Raza Gilani’s repeated assurances that the allocations were for all members of the house.

Interior Minister Rahman Malik told the house he would ask the Sindh police chief to look into the attacks on the newspaper and take action against the alleged attackers but did not respond to Mr Kazmi even after Deputy Speaker Faisal Karim Kundi, who chaired the proceedings, asked him to look into the complaint by his former cabinet colleague, who has been under detention for a long time for his role in alleged mismanagement of accommodation for Pakistani Haj pilgrims in Saudi Arabia last year and who attends the house thanks to a production order from the chair.Mr Kazmi said, apparently light-heartedly, that he could think of a hunger strike since it was already difficult from him to eat.

There was no government response also to Mr Amir’s grouse although the prime minister was present in the house, nor to a demand from a PPP member from the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, Syed Akhonzada Chittan, that Fata women be given representation in parliament after recent extension of the Political Parties Act to the area.