What are Pakistan’s controversial constitutional amendments about?
As Pakistan is suffering from many issues, one of them is the imbalance of power between politics, judiciary and military.
Recent proposed constitutional amendments reportedly aimed at giving the political executive more power over the judiciary have emerged as the latest tug of war between the government and the opposition in Pakistan.
The opposition, mainly led by incarnated former Prime Minister Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party, has denounced the proposed reforms, calling them “unconstitutional” and saying that no draft of the proposed changes had been shared with them or the media.
What are Pakistan’s controversial constitutional amendments about?
Here’s a breakdown of the key proposals:
What are the proposed amendments?
The government’s package includes more than 50 proposals, most of them concerning the judiciary.
Main points:
- One of the main suggestions is to create a new Federal Constitutional Court alongside the Supreme Court.
- The Constitutional Court would handle petitions pertaining strictly to interpretations of constitutional clauses.
- The proposed amendments also include raising the retirement age of judges in the proposed Constitutional Court to 68, as opposed to other judges who retire at 65.
- Additionally, the term of a judge serving in the Constitutional Court would not exceed three years. Judges in other courts do not have term limits beyond the cap imposed by the retirement age.
- The proposals say the chief justice of the Constitutional Court would be appointed by the president, a nominal head of state, on the recommendations of the prime minister.
- Another key proposal is to revise a controversial ruling by the Supreme Court in May 2022, which said that a legislator’s individual vote against their party line would not be counted.
Appointments to the Supreme Court are currently conducted by a Judicial Commission, which looks at senior-most judges of the high court and recommends names to a parliamentary committee that must confirm them.
The amendments seek to overturn that by allowing legislators to defy their party line when voting in parliament.
Problem with the numbers:
According to Pakistan’s law, constitutional amendments require a two-thirds majority in both houses of parliament.
The lower house, called the National Assembly, has 336 seats, while the Senate, the upper house, has 96.
The government needs at least 224 votes in the National Assembly and 64 in the Senate to push its package.
But Sharif’s coalition government has only managed to secure 214 votes in the National Assembly, and with eight added from the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam–Fazal (JUI-F) party – which is not part of the governing coalition – would still fall short of the 224 mark by two votes.
In the Senate, the government has 57 and needs at least seven more. Again, it would fall short even with five JUI-F senators added to its tally.
Irfan Siddiqui, a legislator from the governing coalition, played down the government’s inability to secure the votes needed to pass the amendments, suggesting that it was a matter of time before the numbers were managed.
“It may take a week or 10 days for the constitutional amendments to be presented in the parliament for approval. I don’t see any problem in it and this is not the end of the world,” he told reporters on Monday.
Are the amendments threat to PTI?
Both the government and the PTI are trying to win over the JUI-F legislators in this tussle.
PTI leader Sayed Zulfi Bukhari said the delay in tabling the Constitutional Package showed that the government lacked the required votes, or else it would have “rushed through” the amendments.
“They are in a hurry to pass the amendments in order to ensure that the current Chief Justice Qazi Faez Isa, who is retiring next month, should become the chief justice of the newly-proposed Constitutional Court, which would overrule all other courts,” he told Al Jazeera.
Bukhari said his party was opposed to the proposed changes, which threaten to render the judiciary “toothless” by taking away its independence.
“At the end of the day, the sole purpose behind all these constitutional changes is to somehow find a way to ban the PTI and send Imran Khan’s case to military court,” he said.
In essence, the PTI argument boils down to the allegation that the government, by handpicking judges to a new court empowered with decisions on constitutional matters – including the fate of political parties – plans to strengthen its chances of judicial support for moves against the PTI and Khan.
Imran Khan was jailed in August last year on several charges, including inciting riots in May that year which led to widespread violence and attacks on government and military buildings.
Though his conviction in most cases has either been overturned or suspended, the 71-year-old cricketer-turned-politician remains in detention, despite several rights groups calling it “arbitrary”.
Additionally, a recent indication by the government and the military that Khan could now be tried in a secretive military court has further riled the PTI, which has renewed its protests to demand his immediate release.
Earlier this month, PTI lawyers filed a petition to block a move to send Khan’s case to military court for trial.
