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Contempt of Court

Pak MPs pass bill to exempt govt high-ups

AFP, Islamabad
Pakistani lawmakers have passed a bill that would exempt the country’s president, prime minister and ministers from contempt of court proceedings, a move seen as a bid to save the new prime minister from disqualification.
The Supreme Court has given Prime Minister Raja Pervez Ashraf until tomorrow to indicate whether he will obey an order to ask Swiss authorities to reopen multi-million
FROM PAGE 1 dollar corruption cases against the president.
The court dismissed Yousuf Raza Gilani as prime minister on June 19 after convicting him of contempt in April for refusing to reopen the cases against President Asif Ali Zardari.
The bill passed by the lower house of the Pakistani parliament on Monday night said senior government figures including the president and the PM could not be found guilty of contempt for acts performed as part of their job.
The bill must be passed by the upper house and signed off by the president before it becomes law.
The main opposition parly Pakistan Muslim League-N headed by former prime minister Nawaz Sharif boycotted the proceedings, but parly spokesman Siddiqui Farooq condemned the new bill.
"Since it is designed and aimed to protect one person namely Asif Ali Zardari from accountability, therefore it has no constitutional, legal and moral effects," he told AFP.
Ashraf defended the bill, saying it would not obstruct
anyone from doing their duties, nor would it make anyone a "holy cow".
Law minister Farooq H Naek, who introduced the bill, said confusion in the existing contempt law had been removed and insisted the amendment was not made in haste.
The allegations against Zardari date back to the 1990s, when he and his late wife, late premier Benazir Bhutto, are suspected of using Swiss bank accounts to launder $12 million allegedly paid in bribes by companies seeking customs inspection contracts.
The Swiss shelved the cases in 2008 when Zardari became president and the government insists the president has full immunity as head of state.
But in 2009 the Supreme Gouri overturned a political amnesty that had frozen investigations into the president and other politicians, ordering that the cases be reopened.
Author and political analyst Imtiaz Gul said he did not think the new bill would help the prime minister, even if it makes it into law.
"I don't think the Supreme Court will budge from its position. The Supreme Court has opened a case and it will take it to its logical end rather than aborting it under pressure," he told AFP.
"It will sharpen the already simmering fight between the judiciary and the government."