NA enters fifth year satisfied with legislative performance

DAWN REPORT

ISLAMABAD: The National Assembly enters its fifth and final parliamentary year this weekend pretty satisfied with its legislative work – but for the black spot of a new accountability law that has been hanging fire for three years.

The last session of the fourth parliamentary year of the present National Assembly began on Wednesday, but the controversial law that the government had introduced in the lower house in April 2009 is still not in sight because of a persisting deadlock between the PPP and PML-N over certain clauses of its draft.

But the current MNAs can take pride in their legislative performance because the assembly passed 96 bills in four years – at an average of one bill after every two weeks.

The assembly passed 28 bills, including Industrial Relations Act, 2012, which was adopted on Wednesday, during the fourth parliamentary year ending on Friday as compared to 31 in the third and 32 in the second parliamentary years.

Of the 96 bills passed by the National Assembly since March 2008, 64 have become acts of parliament after their passage by the Senate and a formal assent by the president. Most of the remaining 31 bills have been pending before the Senate for approval.

The most significant job performed by parliament in four years is the passage of 18th, 19th and 20th amendments that required more hard work by the members than an ordinary legislation.

A record number of 147 private member bills have also been tabled in the house in four years – 40 during the fourth parliamentary year. However, almost all of them have been lying dormant before the standing committees concerned for lack of interests by legislators.

The government has also laid 91 ordinances before the assembly in four years that include a record 68 presidential ordinances during the second parliamentary year. The president promulgated only five ordinances during this year.

The reason for the high number of ordinances laid during the second parliamentary year was the Supreme Court’s judgment of July 31, 2009, in which it declared imposition of the Nov 3, 2007 emergency as unconstitutional and illegal and lifted the so-called permanent status of 38 ordinances calling the government to decide about them in parliament.

Similarly, the reason for laying less number of presidential ordinances before the house during the third and fourth years is mainly the passage of the 18th Amendment that has barred re-promulgation of ordinances without the prior approval of parliament through a resolution.

The accountability law seeking replacement of the National Accountability Bureau with a much powerful and independent National Accountability Commission (NAC) has been stuck up at the committee because of the differences between the PPP and PML-N mainly on four issues.

The PML-N has been insisting that the head of the NAC should compulsorily be a sitting judge of the Supreme Court whereas the draft law suggests that the office can be held “either by a sitting judge, or a retired judge or any person qualified to be a judge of the Supreme Court”.

The PML-N is also against the immunity proposed for a holder of public office for any wrongdoing committed in ‘good faith’. Moreover, it says the proposed bill does not require the government to ask foreign states to freeze and forfeit assets relevant to any investigation in Pakistan.

Former minister for parliamentary affairs Babar Awan had tabled “the Holder of Public Office (Accountability) Act, 2009, (the name changed to NAC Act, 2010) in the assembly in April 2009 in the light of the first speech made by the prime minister on the floor of the NA after his election on March 29, 2008, in which he had promised to disband NAB and create an independent accountability commission as envisaged in the Charter of Democracy.