Pakistani parliament approves key amendments bill
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Pakistani parliament Thursday passed with majority vote wide-ranging constitutional amendments to strip the president of his sweeping powers.
Amid slogans against former military rulers Zia-ul-Haq and Pervez Musharraf, the members of the National Assembly, lower house of the parliament, approved other measures to transfer powers from the office of the president to the prime minister.
The amendments declared as illegal all the measures taken by Pervez Musharraf, who took power in a bloodless coup in 1999 after dismissing the elected government of then Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif.
The amendments include taking away the president's power to dismiss an elected government and appoint military chiefs.
The amendments were approved with the majority vote of 292 in the house of 342. A total of 228 votes were required for the passage of the amendments. No member opposed but several abstained from the voting.
The amendments change name of the North West Frontier Province (NWFP) as Khyber Pakhtoonkhwa (Khyber side of the land of the Pashtoons).
The renaming of the province has been a long-standing demand of the ethnic Pashtoons who dominate the NWFP.
A parliamentary committee with representation of all the major political parties had already signed the draft and in Thursday's session the lower house gave approval to all clauses of the bill call 18th amendment. There had been little opposition to the bill.
Under the Pakistani constitution, constitutional amendment must be passed with a two-thirds majority both in the Senate and National Assembly.
Analysts said that the consensus on the agreement is a major success of the ruling Pakistan Peoples Party, its coalition partners as well as opposition parties.
"I congratulate the nation over the passage of the amendments with a majority vote," Prime Minister Syed Yusuf Raza Gilani told the National Assembly after the bill was adopted. He said the government had developed consensus on the bill.
Earlier the constitution conferred vast powers on the president, including the power to appoint army chiefs, the head of the election commission and the head of the public service commission.
The president also had the power to dismiss all or any of the central or provincial governments and parliaments.
Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari in his recent address to the joint session of the parliament had indicated that he would do away with these powers.
Gilani said the government wanted a package of constitutional reforms designed to restore the 1973 constitution to its original form.
The lower house received the much-awaited proposals for landmark constitutional reforms that restored its lost power and a genuine parliamentary system after its repeated mutilation by military dictators, analysts said.
