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Senate Approves Bill Giving Vast Powers to President Musharraf
Huma Aamir Malik
Agencies, Arab News
ISLAMABAD, 31 January 2003 — President Pervez Musharraf won vast powers, including the authority to dismiss the elected government, yesterday as the Senate approved a set of sweeping constitutional amendments despite opposition protests.
The National Assembly passed the constitutional amendment bill on Monday by a two-thirds majority. The approval of the Senate means Musharraf will stay in power until late 2007, subject to a formal vote of confidence tomorrow, and keep the powerful post of military chief for one more year, until the end of 2004.
Gen. Musharraf took power in a bloodless coup in October 1999, before handing over some powers to a prime minister after elections in October 2002.
The bill was approved in the Senate by 72 of the 100 house members, with opponents staging a walkout, government officials said. The ruling coalition won the votes of a hard-line Islamic alliance, the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA), to get the required two-thirds majority.
The MMA, which vehemently opposes Musharraf’s decision to side with the United States in the war on terror, has said it supported the amendments to end a political deadlock that had paralyzed both houses of Parliament since last year’s election.
The main opposition, Alliance for Restoration of Democracy (ARD), said Islamic parties had once again proved themselves to be allies of the military, as they have often been in the past.
“It is a black day in Pakistan’s history because Parliament has circumvented its own powers,” Sen. Raza Rabbani, a senior ARD leader, told Reuters.
“The Parliament, prime minister and the Cabinet have surrendered their powers to a single man,” he said.
The ARD says the amendment formalizes the role of the military in politics and ratifies what it calls massive militarization of civil institutions and society.
“We pledge to the people of Pakistan, whenever we get the two-thirds majority, we will undo these anti-democracy and anti-people amendments,” Rabbani said.
The amendments relate to changes Musharraf made in the constitution before he returned the country to democracy in 2002. The deal will be sealed with a vote of confidence in Musharraf on Jan. 1 in the National Assembly, the Senate and all four provincial assemblies.
The government says the deal will help end uncertainty and bring stability.
Analysts say Musharraf has strengthened his position by winning a seal of approval for his constitutional changes.
Critics say the addition of a clause requiring Musharraf to seek the Supreme Court’s approval within 30 days of sacking the Parliament is meaningless, as the top court’s judges never vote against the president.
Musharraf, a staunch ally of Washington in the war against terror, survived a suicide bombing on Thursday blamed on Islamic militants, the second assassination attempt in 11 days.
He has, however, been successful in winning the votes of the MMA, which includes groups that supported Afghanistan’s former Taleban regime. But the list of Musharraf’s enemies has grown since he took a front-line role in the US-led campaign after the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States in 2001.
He has angered militants by dropping support for the Taleban, arresting hundreds of members of Al-Qaeda and cracking down on domestic militant groups, while at the same time edging toward peace with rival India.
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| Earth, a planet hungry for peace |
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| The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03). |
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| The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers in the West Bank, like a Python (Alquds, 1/25/03. |
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