The National Assembly on Wednesday passed two bills with a majority vote amid much commotion from the opposition benches.
The Anti-Terrorism Act (Amendment) Bill, 2020, and the United Nations Security Council (Amendment) Bill, 2020, aim at fulfilling certain requirements of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) in order to bring the country out of the grey list. The legislation will empower the federal government to direct authorities to implement various measures, with regards to the Security Council resolutions including the freezing and seizure of assets, travel ban, and arms embargo on the entities and individuals, who are designated on the sanctions list of the United Nations.
The bills were passed amid sloganeering from the opposition benches, mainly in protest against the Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi’s speech in the assembly on Tuesday in which he had explained the deadlock between the government and the opposition over a number of legislations. The noisy protest led the NA speaker to suspend proceedings on three occasions: twice when Qureshi refused to speak amid the opposition’s slogans and once soon after the passage of the bills.
Speaking in the assembly, PML-N leader Khawaja Asif regretted that accountability laws seem only to apply when the opposition is to be targeted, while ‘extremely corrupt’ elements on the government benches enjoy immunity from the same laws. He said that the opposition and his party want what is better for the country, and for this purpose, they “do not want to make the FATF controversial”. “If history is any indication, those who make wrong laws fall victim to them. We do not want these people [the government] to be targeted by such laws [in the future],” he said, adding that his party wants the laws to be amended and is not opposed to the idea.
“Nine members of the 25-member special parliamentary committee were having an informal meeting to discuss legislation on FATF and NAB (National Accountability Bureau). The issue was to go back to the main committee, but the foreign minister disclosed the details on the floor of the house which was against ethics and norms,” Asif said. “Qureshi crossed all the limits by disclosing details of the meeting which should have been kept secret because the minister wanted to do politics,” he went on to say. “He (Qureshi) tried to give the impression that the opposition was only interested in NAB laws and not FATF. There was no need to bring these things on the record,” he said, and criticised Qureshi for not disclosing before the Lower House that the two sides had, in fact, reached consensus on the two FATF-related bills a day earlier.
Referring to Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi’s earlier statement, the PML-N leader said that the amendment of accountability laws is needlessly being given a political colour. He recalled that the NA speaker had made a committee and it was agreed that all the bills will be sent to that committee. “But an impression is being given that we are blackmailing [the government] over the issue of NAB, even though the government and opposition had discussed the matter first during our talks,” he said.
The speaker then gave Qureshi the floor three or four times to respond to Asif, but the minister refused to speak due to the opposition’s protest. The speaker and the deputy speaker asked him to continue his speech, but he said he would do so when there was silence and order in the house.
Instead of Qureshi, federal minister Murad Saeed responded to the opposition, accusing it of attempting to seek relief from the government for their alleged corruption. He said Prime Minister Imran Khan will not give any such ‘NRO’.
