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| Rabbani’s panel in no haste despite Zardari’s rush |
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Sunday, November 08, 2009
By Tariq Butt
ISLAMABAD: President Asif Zardari may be in a hurry to repeal the 17th Amendment, the parliamentary committee of Raza Rabbani is not.
No urgency matching the apparent pressure on Zardari to shed his sweeping discretionary powers was visible in the recent meetings of this 27-member multiparty parliamentary committee that is assigned to propose constitutional amendments, its participants say.
“We are going ahead reviewing the Constitution in its entirety in a normal course without any hurry and examining articles that need to be amended,” one of them told The News.
He said that there was no specific element of urgency being demonstrated by the ruling Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) representatives in the deliberations of the committee that met on Friday and would hold another session next week.
Committee Chairman Senator Raza Rabbani has been part of most of crucial deliberations held at the Presidency over the past few days wherein the issue of the president’s exclusive powers was discussed.
Another participant said that although Zardari had of late been quoted as saying that the package of amendments should be cleared by parliament by coming March, no such signs were so far visible in discussions of the parliamentary committee.
At one point, he said, it was briefly discussed that whatever was agreed should be tabled in parliament first in the form of a constitutional bill and the points on which there was difference of opinion and would take quite some time to hammer out should be left for the next amendment bill as and when an agreement would be reached.
However, the participant said the proposal did not get through and it was decided that everything would be bunched together in a comprehensive constitutional package.
“Every parliamentary party represented in the committee has its core agenda that it wants to be implemented,” another source said. “Therefore, it is not quite possible to arrive at a consensus on the package too early unless the demands of everyone are accommodated.”
The participant said that those pushing for greater provincial autonomy also wanted to tie up doing away with the presidential powers with the acceptance of their demands.
He believed that even after reducing the president’s discretionary powers, the PPP wanted to give a dominant role to Zardari so that he would not become absolutely redundant. Raza Rabbani was not available for comments.
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ISSN 1563-9479 
