ISLAMABAD: The National Assembly on Tuesday rejected a bill seeking scrutiny of allegations against lawmakers by a special committee of the House before their arrests to decide at an initial stage about further legal action against the accused.
The bill titled ‘The Constitution (Amendment) Bill, 2020’ was moved by Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) MNA Syed Javed Hasnain but it was rejected after being opposed by Parliamentary Secretary for Law and Justice Maleeka Bokhari.
The mover of the bill said the parliament was the supreme body which legislates for welfare of people but its members could be arrested unlike other institutions which had their internal system to investigate allegations against their employees.
He proposed that investigating agencies should be bound to write a letter to National Assembly speaker or Senate chairman in case of any allegation against any parliamentarian.
He said the custodians of both the houses – National Assembly and Senate – should constitute special committees to investigate and decide whether its member is guilty or not.
Hasnain said police can not arrest any personnel of anti-corruption department while anti-corruption does’nt takes action against personnel of the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA), adding if so, why there is no such mechanism for accountability lawmakers.
“The parliament should have the authority to review or scrutinize the charges against its members,” he maintained.
But Malika Bokhari was quick to oppose the private member’s bill, saying the public representatives should be accountable of their acts as they are more responsible compared to others.
Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) parliamentary leader in National Assembly Naveed Qamar said ethics committees existed in various parliaments of the world and it would not be strange here if cases against the parliamentarians were reviewed by the parliament at the initial stage.
Meanwhile, responding to a calling attention notice, Minister for Aviation Ghulam Sarwar Khan and PPP lawmakers came face to face over fake degree on issue of state of affairs of the Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) and seizure of its plane in Malaysia.
The PPP members including Hina Rabbani Khar, Nafeesa Shah, Naveed Qamar and Shagufta Jumani raised the calling attention on government’s failures to meeting international failures leading to seizure of PIA hotels in New York and Paris and its plane in Malaysia.
Khar said the ministers had nothing except blaming past governments to hide their own failures and incompetence. She also questioned whether the minister for aviation was not aware of international obligation that the PIA plane along with passengers was seized in Malaysia which happened for the first time in country’s history.
Shah and Jumani also demanded resignation of the aviation minister for giving a wrong statement with regard to fake degrees of the PIA pilots thus, hurting country’s image and causing billions of rupees loss to the national kitty.
The minister, however, said it should be the opposition members not the government who should resign for looting the country and playing havoc to institutions such as the PIA and the Pakistan Steel Mills (PSM).
He pointed out that the PIA plane was brought back with 173 passengers onboard from Malaysia after reaching out of court settlement with the company concerned.
He also mentioned that the present government also averted 1.2 billion dollars penalty in Karkey case, while dispute in case of RekoDiq would be also be settle of court.
The minister said he took the right decision to get educational credentials of the PIA pilots verified, saying now India had also started the process to verifying the degrees of its 4,000 pilots.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2021