A two-member bench of the Supreme Court has admitted a petition on interpretation of implications of the controversial National Reconciliation Ordinance (NRO) promulgated by Pervez Musharraf a day before presidential elections that pardoned President Asif Zardari, his spouse Benazir Bhutto and many others on corruption charges.

The bench, comprising Justices Shakirullah Jan and Raja Fayyaz, asked the Chief Justice to constitute a larger bench to give a ruling on the constitutional issues involved. The bench passed the orders during the hearing of an appeal of a former assistant director of Federal Investigation Agency (FIA), Fazal Ahmed Jat, against rejection of his relief plea under the NRO by the Sindh High Court.

The status of NRO and its impact on President Zardari is under debate in the country since the landmark judgment by the court on July 31 in which it declared Musharraf’s November 3 actions of imposition of emergency and suspension of the constitution and also his subsequent steps to validate all his ordinances and other acts as unconstitutional.

Another petition challenging the constitutional validity of the NRO has been pending before the Supreme Court since October 12, 2007. The petitions were filed by a former federal minister Mubashar Hasan and a retired civil servant Roedad Khan.

The SC under Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry in its order on October 12, 2007, restrained federal and provincial governments from allowing any relief to anybody under the NRO pending final ruling on Mubashar’s petition. But Musharraf dismissed Iftikhar and sixty other judges of superior courts on November 3 and installed a new court under Justice Abdul Hamid Dogar.

The Dogar court promptly vacated the stay order opening floodgates of amnesty to Bhutto, Zardari and scores of their party leaders and bureaucrats who had fled the country while being charged with corruption. Several thousand activists of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) implicated in heinous crimes like murder, terrorism, arson and kidnapping were also freed from jails under the NRO.

Mubashar, a former founding secretary-general of the Pakistan People’s Party and finance minister in ZA Bhutto government, said on a TV channel on Tuesday that he would too approach the SC to revive his petition.

Mubashar said the NRO has been the bane of most of the political and economic problems currently being faced by the country. “It allowed Zardari to occupy the exalted office of the president and get back millions of dollars of the looted money stacked in domestic or foreign banks,” he said adding: “Without it he would be languishing either in jail or living the life of an exile out of the country.”

The same is true of his cronies who have returned to the country and installed in key position in important state institutions, he added.

Expert opinion is divided over the impact on Zardari if the court overturns the NRO. The majority view is that he has already availed the benefits of the ordinance and would not be affected though his moral position would be substantially undermined. Only the government can reopen corruption and other cases against him, an unlikely prospect.

Two prominent MPs have flayed the Pakistan government for allowing Indian films and serials to be telecasted on the television and cable and demanded immediate imposition of a ban on the same.

Bushra Rehman, an author belonging to the former ruling party, Pakistan Muslim League-Quaid (PML-Q), according to media reports, virtually became “hysterical” in an outburst against what she termed as India’s cultural onslaught on Pakistan.

She said the promotion of alien Indian culture by privately owned channels and cable networks was a cause of serious concern as it was spoiling the youth.

Maulana Fazlur Rehman, chief of the Jamiatul Ulema Islam (JUI), a component of the ruling coalition, and three other PML-Q members endorsed Rehman’s views.

While the government has refused to accept their demand, even some leading newspapers have criticised the MPs for their “outlandish” views. Responding to the points raised by the two MPs, information minister Qamar Zaman Kaira said the demand for imposing any curbs on the channels was unjustified.

He said the government believed in media’s freedom and had left it to formulate its own code of ethics.

He reminded Rehman that the permission to screen Indian films and serials was granted when her party was in power.

There is also a legal hitch in withdrawing it as the cable operators have threatened to challenge any such action in court. The Indian and Pakistani governments clamped the ban on each other’s news channels during high tension generated by the terrorist attack on Indian Parliament in December 2007, that had led to the deployment of Indian troops on Pakistani borders.

Interestingly, Musharraf allowed Pakistani channels and cable operators to run Indian films and TV drama serials during the lawyers’ movement in 2007, ostensibly to focus public attention away from agitation to entertainment.

Kuala Lumpur, August 13
Indian cooks and barbers may soon find it difficult to get jobs in Malaysia as the government here plans to train and employ locals in these fields.

Malaysian Indian restaurants will employ local cooks and not import chefs from India in the future, Human Resources Minister S Subramaniam said here.

“We hope to reduce the number of cooks from India in stages once the first batch of locally-trained chefs graduate,” he said at a local training school.

Subramaniam said the fees for the trainees were borne by the ministry through the Human Resources Development Fund, adding that they would also receive monthly allowances.

“Once they graduate, they will be able to open their own restaurants,” he said, adding that the future was promising for ethnic Indian youths.

The minister said the idea was mooted by Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak, who wanted the ministry to train local chefs and not depend on cooks from India.

Another training programme undertaken by the ministry was hair-styling, to replace barbers from India, he added. — PTI

Dhaka, August 13
Bangladesh Foreign Minister Dipu Moni will be in India early next month to discuss the Tipaimukh dam issue and to follow up on assurances given to a parliamentary delegation that went to study the site.

Moni told the media Wednesday that details of her visit were being worked out and that the visit could be in the first week of September.

Parliamentary delegation leader Abdur Razzaq added that the aerial visit to Tipaimukh in India's Manipur state had yielded three "achievements" with regard to Bangladesh's concerns about the dam that is proposed to be built on Barak river, the Daily Star reported.

India, he said, had assured the team that the dam was meant for a hydroelectric plant, and was not an irrigation project. India would not build any barrage or structures for stopping water flowing downstream of Tipaimukh site. — IANS