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ISLAMABAD: Logical or not, the objections of opposition Pakistan Muslim League-N on the recommendations of the Parliamentary Committee on National Security (PCNS) after signing them are certainly a repeat performance.
In March 2010, PML-N’s representatives, in a similar all-party committee on constitutional reforms, had agreed to the final draft of the 18th Constitution Amendment bill, but their party chief Nawaz Sharif stunned them and the whole nation when moments before the scheduled signing of the historic report, he announced at a news conference that the judges’ appointment mechanism proposed in the package was not acceptable to his party.
Mr Sharif’s about-face drew the ire not only of his opponents, but the whole media took the PML-N to task for backtracking on the earlier agreed proposal.
Next day, the members of the Parliamentary Committee on Constitutional Reforms, however, felt quite relieved when PML-N representatives did not press for the demand made by Mr Sharif to reconsider the already agreed proposal and in a face-saving move submitted a dissenting note.
Similarly, soon after presentation of the 16-point report on “revised terms of engagements with the US and Nato” by PCNS chairman Raza Rabbani during the joint sitting here on Tuesday, Opposition Leader in the National Assembly Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan, on the floor of the house, criticised the report and the PML-N leaders later told media that they could not allow the government to get it approved in the same form.
Talking to reporters outside the Parliament House, Chaudhry Nisar even declared the report as a “weak” document despite the fact it also carried the signatures of opposition representatives Ishaq Dar and Sardar Mahtab Ahmed Khan.
Raza Rabbani told Dawn that each and every point in the report had been deliberated upon by all the committee members and all of them had put their signatures on it, except for the Jamaat-i-Islami member, who later withdrew his support.
Mr Rabbani said the PCNS functioned like other parliamentary committees where every member had a right to submit a dissenting note on any of the points, if he or she did not agree to it. He said no member had submitted a note of dissent on any point of the report which he had read out during the joint sitting. He said every report of the parliamentary committee, be it a draft of a bill or resolution or recommendations on certain issues, was subject to the final approval of parliament through a vote count.
On the other hand, PML-N Senator Ishaq Dar said dissenting notes were submitted while discussing draft of the bills or any issue in which the members were required to vote in the form of ‘yes or no’.
He was of the view that the PCNS was only preparing a ‘working paper’ which had now become an open and public document for a debate.
Mr Dar said the PCNS members had agreed that they would not disclose and discuss details of the proceedings even with their party chiefs and it would be debated only after its presentation. He said since the members were attending the meetings without having an “outside consensus” or discussion within the party, the nature of PCNS work was different this time.
After adjournment of the joint sitting, almost 50 PML-N legislators gathered at a committee room where Mr Dar and Mahtab Ahmed briefed them on the PCNS report.
