Supreme Court decision against Panama (ToR)
ISLAMABAD: The government and the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) are set to present before the Supreme Court on Thursday the same terms of reference (ToR) on the basis of which they have already introduced separate bills in the two houses of parliament.
It was after months of bickering and failure to agree on the
ToR for a commission to investigate the Panamagate scandal that the government
introduced in the National Assembly its bill seeking to replace the 60-year-old
Inquiry Commission Act, 1956, and the opposition submitted its own bill for the
purpose to the Senate.
The deliberations of a parliamentary committee formed by the
National Assembly speaker to formulate the ToR for the inquiry commission were
deadlocked in June over the opposition parties’ insistence that the inquiry
process should begin with Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and members of his
family.
The issue has been a bone of contention between the
government and the opposition, and now it has been left to the apex court to
decide the scope and process of the judicial commission.
Talking to Dawn on Tuesday, PTI vice-chairman Shah Mehmood
Qureshi said his party’s main contention was still the same — the
accountability process should start from the prime minister. He said the PTI
would submit the ToR on the basis of which Aitzaz Ahsan of the Pakistan Peoples
Party (PPP) had tabled the bill in the Senate on behalf of all opposition
parties in September.
Mr Qureshi said the bill had jointly been drafted by Mr Ahsan
and Hamid Khan, who is representing the PTI in the Supreme Court, and later
endorsed by all opposition parties.
Terming Tuesday’s decision of the Supreme Court a “victory”
for the PTI, he said the court was not bound to adopt the complete ToR either of
the government or the opposition. He said the court had asked the parties
involved in the case to submit their ToR and then it would itself determine the
future course.
The National Assembly’s law and justice committee had already
approved the government-sponsored “Pakistan Commissions of Inquiry Bill, 2016”
in the absence of PPP and PTI members.
On the other hand, the opposition had itself sought deferment
from a Senate committee of its bill seeking formation of a commission to
investigate charges against the prime minister and members of his family
regarding setting up of offshore companies through illegal means.
Only three of the 44 movers of the bill were present in the
committee meeting when its chairman Javed Abbasi announced that he had received
a request from Leader of the Opposition in the Senate Aitzaz Ahsan for the
deferment of the bill because he was busy in connection with a case before a
bench of the Supreme Court in Karachi.
The government has termed the opposition’s bill “completely
“discriminatory, aiming at “targeting” the prime minister, whose name was not
even mentioned in the Panama Papers. The bill has a limited scope and will not
be helpful in preventing illegal practices in future, it says.
The opposition’s bill suggests a forensic audit of all the
money sent abroad through secret channels. The proposed law makes it binding
upon all those whose names have appeared in the Panama Papers to provide judges
of the commission access to their bank accounts. The bill binds the commission
to investigate Prime Minister Sharif and members his family and before
proceeding against more than 600 other Pakistanis named in the Panama Papers.
However, the carefully prepared text avoids naming PM Sharif
or his office, instead referring to: “the inquiry against a respondent, who
publicly volunteers himself and his family for accountability or who publicly
admits holding of offshore assets, along with his family, shall be completed
and submitted in the first instance.”
The opposition wants the commission to complete the inquiry
against the prime minister in three months — with an option of one month
extension — and against the rest in one year.
Through the bill, the opposition wants the commission to
investigate properties bought or sold by the respondent and his family during
the period between 1985 and 2016.
On the other hand, the government says its bill is based on
the observation made by the Chief Justice of Pakistan that the existing Inquiry
Commission Act, 1956, was toothless and powerless. The government’s bill
suggests that besides investigating the Panama Papers leaks, the commission
should also have the powers to probe establishment of offshore companies, loans
written off, illegal transfer of money to foreign countries and other corrupt
practices.
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