ISLAMABAD: Two former National Assembly speakers say Dr Fehmida Mirza had no legal authority or power to take the decision of digressing from the Supreme Court judgment which convicted Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani on contempt charge.
“She was required to simply forward the reference to the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) for a decision,” the former speaker told The News. What she has done is unprecedented, not provided in the Constitution, Gohar Ayub Khan said.
Another former Speaker Chaudhry Amir Hussain said that Dr Mirza did not have any important role to play and was required to just send the reference to the ECP. Leading constitutional expert Wasim Sajjad whom Dr Mirza consulted to form her opinion on the court judgment agreeed that the speaker’s role in the instant case was of an administrative nature.
Gohar Ayub said that while the speaker’s ruling could not be challenged in a court of law, the present decision, which was of an administrative nature, could be called into question in a superior judicial forum. “It is not a ruling.”
The speaker’s determination was headlined as “ruling”, which, in fact, it was not, but it was a decision by her as she performed her administrative functions in dealing with the present case.
Gohar Ayub said he thought that the government might have moved in the National Assembly a motion regarding the Supreme Court verdict seeking a ruling from the speaker. Had this happened, the speaker’s decision was not challengeable in a court, he said adding that the case of her present determination was totally different.
He said he did not remember that such a judicial decision was ever sent to any speaker by the highest court in the past. But he said neither the speaker nor anybody else has any power or authority to sit on judgment on a court ruling.
The two former speakers were in unison that it was only the ECP, which has the power under the Constitution to disqualify and unseat an MP and the speaker’s job was only to forward the reference on the force of the court judgment.
Gohar Ayub said that in case of rowdy behaviour of an MP, the speaker can summon the sergeant-at-arms to take the unruly member out of the House. He added that the presiding officer can suspend a member for some days depending upon the gravity of his misconduct. The MP is thus debarred from attending parliamentary proceedings.
Even when a member resigns, Gohar Ayub said, the speaker sends the resignation to the ECP, which issues the notification to unseat him.In 1992 when he was speaker, he received the resignations of all the members of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) through telegrams.
Gohar Ayub said that to verify their authenticity he telephonically spoke to each and every MQM member since he could recognize their voice. “After I was sure that he was the particular resigned MNA I was speaking to, I forwarded his resignation to the ECP.”
Amir Hussain said Dr Mirza did not have any significant role to play when she received the detailed judgment. He said that she should have referred it to the ECP that would have done the final determination on unseating the prime minister. “The speaker was not empowered to do anything in this case.”
The former speaker, who is also a prominent practising lawyer, said that when the prime minister stated that he would prefer six-month imprisonment on contempt charge rather than being hanged for treason for violating the Constitution by writing letters to Switzerland to reopen graft cases against President Asif Ali Zardari, he in reality committed aggravated form of scandalizing and ridiculing the court.
He said everything became crystal clear after the detailed decision was announced. He said the confusion being spread by certain quarters about Gilani’s conviction vanished quickly.Law Minister Farooq Naek in a recent TV interview had, however, stated that the recent judgment of the SC was “beyond the scope of the charge sheet as PM was charge sheeted in civil contempt and not in judicial contempt. Simply keeping in view this point the Speaker could use her constitutional powers to decide that a question of disqualification had not arisen.
The Speaker Dr Fehmida Mirza herself had stated in an interview on Capital Talk of Geo TV that if she had no role and the Election Commission had to decide everything, why the SC had sent her the judgment.
