Staff Reporter
Islamabad
The government on Wednesday managed to get two Financial Action Task Force related bills passed by the National Assembly amidst a noisy protest by the opposition.
The Anti-terrorism (Amendment) Bill, 2020 and the United Nations (Security Council) (Amendment) Bill, 2020 were both moved by Adviser to the Prime Minister on Parliamentary Affairs Babar Awan.
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.
In his remarks, PML-N MNA Khawaja Asif said he was speaking to present the opposition’s point of view on the foreign minister’s speech yesterday.
He said Qureshi yesterday disclosed the details of an informal meeting between the government and the opposition members held at the speaker’s residence.
“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 added.
“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,” the PML-N lawmaker said.
He criticised Qureshi for not disclosing before the lower house that the two sides had, in fact, reached consensus on the two FATF-related bills yesterday.
“The opposition only wanted to stop the political use of the laws … We cannot allow 90 days’ detention under the pretext of economic terrorism,” he said, explaining why the two sides had disagreed on other FATF-related legislation on Tuesday.
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. Speaker Asad Qaiser and Deputy Speaker Qasim Suri asked him to continue his speech, but he said he would do so when there was silence and order in the house.
