Package to cut President, CJ down to size

By Absar Alam

ISLAMABAD: The Pakistan People?s Party is all set to clip presidential powers and pre-empt the lawyers June 10 long march for the judges restoration by introducing the 18th constitutional amendment, which has almost been finalised, before the budget session.

A meeting in this regard was held between PPP Co-chairman Asif Ali Zardari and Federal Law Minister Farooq H Naek in Islamabad, on Monday evening. The package, prepared by Farooq Naek and Additional Secretary Law Hakim Ali Khan, is an all encompassing document introducing far-reaching changes in the Constitution that would ensure a parliamentary democracy as envisaged in the original 1973 document.

The 18th amendment will, however, prune the Constitution of a few legal lacunas such as the ambiguity of the Article 6 regarding the subversion of the Constitution which is high treason according to this provision. Article VI has not ever been invoked against military dictators who have been subverting the Constitution because the usurpers would get a court verdict followed by a parliamentary approval indemnifying all their unconstitutional acts.

To plug that loophole, Article VI will not only guarantee the proper implementation of this constitutional provision against a military dictator but also ensure that judges are tried under this article too if they give a judicial seal of approval to any unconstitutional action.

Article 58 (2) B that gives powers to the president to dissolve the assemblies, appoint armed forces chiefs, chief election commissioner and governors would also be taken away. The tenure of the chief justice of Pakistan will be restricted either to four or five years and the retirement age of the Supreme Court judges would be increased to 67 or 68 years. The appointment of the judges, in future, would be done through a scrutiny committee.

The number of SC judges is likely to remain the same but few additional/ad hoc judges might be accommodated.The Gordian knot for the PPP would be to line up Pakistan Muslim League-N?s support for this amendment. The PML-N is out of the loop until now and was likely to be taken on board very soon.

Nawaz Sharif, who is arriving in Islamabad on Tuesday, will have a meeting with Asif Ali Zardari in a day or two. The meeting is quite crucial as it will seal the fate of the constitutional package and future course of politics in Pakistan.

It will be a Herculean task for Zardari to extract more concessions from Nawaz Sharif on the judges issue as the PML-N had already given a lot of space,? sources told The News. To get this amendment through both the houses of parliament, the PPP needs a two-thirds majority in the National Assembly as well as the Senate.

To achieve this number, the PPP needs the PML-N support which would lend its helping hand only if the PPP restores the judges through a simple resolution bringing all of them, including Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry, back to November 3 position. This could be done by revoking the November 3 order of the Law Division that barred the judges who did not take oath under the PCO from attending their offices.

If the restoration of the judges is not done through a resolution, it would tantamount to accepting all unconstitutional actions of November 3 as part of the Constitution, and hence would not be acceptable to the PML-N,? the sources said.

The PML-N, however, is keeping its cards close to its chest following the recent political and administrative developments such as the appointments of Salman Taseer as governor Punjab and Mian Manzoor Wattoo as adviser to the prime minister.

Wattoo's appointment, however, is a shrewd political move by Zardari as it will help PPP conjure up the magic number in the Senate where a two-thirds is not possible unless the PML-Q, or its forward bloc, sides with the treasury.

However, bartering of interests with the PML-Q (declared Qatil League by Zardari) will not sink well with the PML-N which is fastening its belt to ride on the judicial bus to Islamabad. A senior PPP leader was quite confident about the passing of the amendment, saying the package would be acceptable to the PML-N. ?It would have enough mouth-watering goodies to woo the PML-N, the PPP leader said.