Another effort on to evolve consensus on legislation in parliament

ISLAMABAD: A effort is being made to constitute a bipartisan committee of the National Assembly and Senate to evolve a consensus on the legislative business particularly over a dozen bills the government wants to push through the Parliament.

Speaker Asad Qaisar has chaired a meeting of senior leaders of all the parliamentary parties including the Opposition in which the issue of lawmaking came up, a participant told The News.

This will be another attempt through the formation of another committee to work out a mechanism to do legislative work. Past bids failed to materialise because of non-seriousness. Whenever ways and means to push the parliamentary passage of proposed laws are discussed in such sessions, a committee is proposed but there is no follow up or a lukewarm approach is shown even if a body is formed.

The government wants to get approval of nearly 14 bills with some related to satisfy the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), which Pakistan is required to approve to avoid any adverse consequence. “We have told the Speaker for at least ten times in the past that we are willing to cooperate but the government has to be serious in lawmaking,” a senior Opposition leader, who attended the meeting, told The News.

He said that it was proposed during the deliberations that in order to hammer out consensus the government should provide to the Opposition the copies of the bills it wants to pass and sit with it to talk about them. “We will give our input and amendments, which, if accepted, would lead to an agreement. It is always better to arrive at an accord outside the House before the presentation of the bills for approval. This leads to smooth sailing of the legislative business. In the past, this mechanism proved successful and result-oriented.”

The Opposition leader said he suggested that the committee should also have representation from the Senate so that the bills cleared in the National Assembly through consensus were not stuck up in the Upper House of Parliament.

He made it clear that the opposition has reservations over certain provisions of the FATA-related bills wherein it would recommend substantial changes. However, he said, its proposals would not affect what the FATF wants Pakistan to do.

Parliamentary Affairs Adviser to the Prime Minister Babar Awan has made public his eagerness to get the pending bills passed without delay asserting that the actual job of the Parliament is lawmaking.

The Opposition leader said the draconian provisions of the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) law would certainly come under debate in the new committee. He said a lot of spadework has already been done and the two sides have with their each other’s drafts of amendments in the NAB ordinance, 1999. He said the real problem occurs when discussions are held and an agreement on certain provisions of the National Accountability Ordinance (NAO) is reached but afterwards there is no positive response from the other side.

“Unless the two sides sit and debate the proposed amendments in the NAO, there can be no progress,” he said and added that it was ironical that the Parliament has failed to do its actual work – legislation – over the past two years. He said the Speaker has articulated his desire for lawmaking multiple times, but has not been able to move forward for different reasons.