By Raja Asghar

ISLAMABAD: The government did some last-minute pleading for a sustained bipartisan understanding on Thursday as the National Assembly passed two bills with consensus contrasting a lot of sword-crossing outside parliament.

Both Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani and his Inter-Provincial Coordination Minister Raza Rabbani spoke of the merits of dialogue and accommodation, which the minister said he was sure would overcome the “present political tensions”.

Their remarks came amid speculations about a possible standoff between the ruling Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) and the Pakistan Muslim League-N (PML-N) if their talks, which concluded on Tuesday, failed to produce an agreement between them on the implementation of a 10-point reforms agenda proposed by the largest opposition party.

But, ahead of an expected final decision by the PML-N leadership on Friday, there was hardly any reflection in the lower house of weeks of fireworks seen outside parliament, which have often degenerated into virtual shouting matches in television talk shows.

Instead, PML-N lawmakers withdrew some amendments they had proposed in the two bills taken up by the house on Thursday for the second time after their passage by the Senate in amended forms, on grounds of consensus of parties in the upper house on changes made in the previous draft.

One of the bills – the Banking Companies (Amendment) Bill – amends the Banking Companies Ordinance, 1962, to strengthen the tools of bank regulations and supervision to provide safeguard against various risks, such as enabling the State Bank of Pakistan to change bank managements, impose losses on shareholders by writing down their capital, intervene in and take control of banks, appoint administrators and restructure banks when symptoms of crisis emerge.

The other – the Federal Board of Revenue (Amendment) Bill – amends the FBR Act of 2007 to empower the board to establish a welfare foundation and a fund for its retired and serving employees, to improve its overall efficiency with incentives for meeting specified performance standards and an overseeing policy board with representation from public representatives and the
public sector.

Senator Rabbani, who headed an all-party parliamentary committee that drafted the landmark Eighteenth and Nineteenth constitution amendments last year, cited the PML-N gesture of not pressing its amendments in the two bills in the lower house and the earlier consensus in the upper house as an evidence of political accommodation shown by the government in both houses, and said he was confident that “in the coming days the present political tensions will also be overcome by understanding” and national agendas would supersede party agendas.

The prime minister voiced his hope that talks held between PPP and PML-N experts on the 10-point economic-cum-political agenda would address complaints raised in Punjab about electricity and gas “management” forced by shortages.

Mr Gilani dismissed an allegation of a PML-N member, Abid Sher Ali, that Punjab was suffering a “step-motherly treatment” in this respect, saying he had originally offered to send the matter to the inter-provincial Council of Common Interests or a joint sitting of parliament, but Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif had wanted it to be taken up in the PPP-PML-N talks.

A heated debate emerged on a call-attention notice from five MQM members on what they called an “inordinate delay” in the completion of the Karachi Mass Transit Project after Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Hina Rabbani Khar, speaking for Finance Minister Abdul Hafeez Sheikh, told the house the government would make its next move on the “unfortunate project” after a feasibility report from the funding agency, Japan International Cooperation Agency (Jica), this year.

Ms Khar denied a statement by MQM deputy parliamentary leader Haider Abbas Rizvi that Jica had already deposited $1.2 billion – out of the estimated cost of $1.5 billion – in a bank in Pakistan.

Railways Minister Ghulam Ahmed Bilour, who also jumped into the discussion, blamed bureaucracy for decades of delay in the implementation of the project for which, he said, the Railways would give 715 acres of its land in Karachi.
Source: Dawn
Date:2/25/2011