Supreme Court ultimate forum to interpret Constitution?: Senate decides to initiate thorough debate

The Upper House of Parliament Tuesday decided to initiate a thorough debate whether Supreme Court of Pakistan is the ultimate forum to interpret the Constitution or the parliament. The lawmakers, majority of whom belonged to treasury lambasted the apex court, saying it is the parliament which is supreme and every other institution is subservient to the parliament being a lawmaking body.
The session which was being chaired by chairman Senate Syed Nayyar Hussain Bukhari even declined to expunge parts of a point of order raised by a Pakistan People's Party (PPP) Senator Saeed Ghani, who objected to some conduct of Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry in connection with his son Arsalan's case.
This led to an absorbing debate on a string of points of order by some treasury and opposition lawmakers. Awami National Party (ANP) - a coalition partner of PPP-led regime - has already filed resolutions in both Senate and National Assembly secretariats for a debate to ascertain whether parliament or Supreme Court is supreme.
Speaking on a point of order, Senator Syeda Sughra Imam of PPP pointed out that being the biggest stakeholder, the parliament should get engaged with Election Commission on how to handle the issue of some 15 million people, who had secured CNIS but had died since the introduction of the computerised ID card.
She said that deletion of such names was crucial to make the voter lists transparent and this would be a huge service to democracy. The lawmakers from both sides welcomed the proposal and the chair directed leaders of the House and opposition to look into the issue and also take the member onboard.
Some lawmakers suggested to make it mandatory for the aggrieved families to obtain death certificate of the deceased with his/her CNIC number clearly mentioned on it and also birth certificate of every new born child. At the same time, ANP senators staged a token walkout from the Senate for the second consecutive day against excruciating power outages and then boycotted the debate on the presidential address, which was wound up after a hard-hitting speech by PML-N Senator Syed Zafar Ali Shah, mainly targeting President Zardari.
The legislators on both sides of the aisle in the Senate also strongly condemned the on-going massacre of Muslims in Burma, as the ruling coalition partners also wanted the House to condemn the seething wave of killings in Karachi, Balochistan and terror acts in tribal areas and other parts of the country, demanding immediate end to the terror activities.
Senators from across the divide also wanted the ministry of foreign affairs to apprise the House of what actions had it taken so far in connection the large-scale deaths of Muslims in Burma and what could OIC can do in this connection. The MQM legislator, earlier objected to the motion, tabled by Leader of the House Jahangir Badr, that called for a discussion on law and order in Balochistan, and Mashahdi said that the Balochistan problem had many dimensions such as political, economic and social injustices besides the role of law-enforcement agencies, kidnapping for ransom, target-killings and sectarian killings.
On the text of the proposed resolution, the Senate Chairman Syed Nayyar Hussain Bokhari said that it was up to the members to decide on this subject with consensus. It was mutually agreed that the House would hold debate on Balochistan problem for two days ie Wednesday and Thursday and the senators from Balochistan would be given time first to speak on the issue.