The National Assembly and Senate approved the 21st Constitutional Amendment and Pakistan Army Act (Amendment) Bill 2015 on Tuesday, lawmakers voted in favour of the laws which will provide constitutional cover to military courts to be established under the proposed amendment for a period of two years for the trial of terrorism suspects.
The Constitutional Amendment Bill was passed after getting the required two-third majority in the NA, and 78 votes from 104 members Senate. Although, the amendment was not opposed by any member present inside the house, lawmakers from Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, Jamaat-e-Islami, Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-Fazl and Sheikh Rasheed refrained from voting in both the NA and the Senate. The bill is now expected to be signed into law by the President this week. The bill aimed to speed up trial of terrorists. Political consensus came out in this regard after the Peshawar massacre in which 134 schoolchildren were killed by the terrorists of TTP in an attack on December 16, 2014. Earlier, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif met parliamentarians to convince them to vote in favour of the proposed constitutional amendment and reiterated that hard measures are the demand of extraordinary circumstances.
With the background at the academic level there come some crunch questions to fore:
PPP Senator Raza Rabbani voted in favour of the amendment inside the parliament, but once he came out, he was not reluctant or shy to spit strange things out “I voted in favour of the amendment against the dictates of my conscious” he said. Now a common man is bound to think whether the gentleman, the respected parliamentarian is himself confused or he is making fun of the intellect of the nation. If it was against the dictates of your inner voice you must have not voted but now once you have opted to vote don’t tell us that our Hamlet is also suffering from procrastination.
