President Zardari endorses contempt of court bill

Islamabad: (Thursday, July 12, 2012) President Asif Ali Zardari here today signed the contempt of court bill 2012. After his signature, the bill has become a law, said the presidential spokesperson Farhatullah Babar.

After both the upper and lower houses of the parliament had approved the bill with majority support, the only hurdle on the way for it to become a law was signature of the president, which were taken today.

While the government is in a loggerhead situation against the judiciary over writing letter to the Swiss authorities, it has tried to save itself by passing the contempt of law bill according to which the Supreme Court will not
be able to render a PM disqualified if he doesn’t act upon the court’s orders.

While there are so many important bills pending only because the legislators do not have the time to discuss them, the contempt bill has become a law within three days.

The bill was approved by the National Assembly on July 9. On July 11, the Senate passed it with a majority. Although two PPP stalwarts along with PML Q’s senator Mushahid Hussain Syed expressed their disagreement with the bill,
but ultimately, they too ended up casting their votes in favour of the bill.

According to this bill, which has now turned into a law, the holder of public offices will no more be held under contempt of court in exercising of powers and performance of function.

Many of the independent analysts see it as a person-specific move of the treasury benches to save Prime Minister Raja Pervaiz Ashraf from meeting the same fate as of Yousuf Raza Gilani for not acting as per the direction of the
apex court for writing letter to the Swiss authorities with regard to President Asif Ali Zardari’s accounts.

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Posted by Fayyaz Yaseen on Jul 12 2012. Filed under Latest News, Pakistan, Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry