Daily Archives: June 29, 2022

PAKISTAN is facing yet another wave of Covid-19 infections, with health experts predicting a surge in hospitalisations by next week. Sadly, pandemic fatigue is writ large everywhere with no one bothered about wearing masks at restaurants, shopping centres, wedding halls, offices, etc. People are going about their daily lives without following safety precautions, endangering themselves and others. During the past few days, hundreds of cases have been recorded all over the country, and infections are steadily rising. The highest number of cases are being reported from Karachi where the positivity rate touched 22pc. Other cities too have reported relatively high rates of Covid infections -Mardan has a positivity rate of 9pc, Hyderabad 8.5pc, Islamabad 3.45pc and Peshawar 3pc. The fresh wave of infections is being attributed to a super contagious Omicron subvariant, the BA2.12.1, which was first detected in the country in the second week of May. But lethargy has prevailed in the weeks since its detection. According to officials, the number of reported cases and positivity rates of different cities have more than doubled since the previous week, indicating the fast transmission of the virus.

Some health officials attribute this rapid transmission to the hot and humid weather prevailing in many areas of the country. Though the NCOC, now part of the National Institute of Health, has instructed people to wear masks while travelling by public transport and on domestic flights and trains, other parallel measures by the federal and provincial governments remain conspicuous by their absence.

It is against this background that a meeting of the NCOC was held on Tuesday where the authorities decided to ramp up testing, ensure contact tracing and undertake aggressive campaigning to promote mask-wearing. It was reported that the Sindh government might soon announce a strategy for curbing the alarming rise in infections.

The authorities should implement strict prevention measures at the earliest, because even a moderate rise in hospitalisations in the current economic climate might prove too much for the country`s fragile health infrastructure.

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THE dissenting opinion by three judges in last week`s landmark US Supreme Court decision on abortion spelt it out rather succinctly: `After today, young women will come of age with fewer rights than their mothers and grandmothers had.

This is neither the first time the court has stripped US citizens of their rights, nor will it be the last. Justice Clarence Thomas whose wife, coincidentally or otherwise, has been implicated in the conspiracy to overturn the popular verdict in the 2020 presidential election made it f airly explicit in his concurring judgement that related rights such as contraception and same-sex marriage could now also be rescinded.

That sense of mission wasn`t echoed in the majority opinion but then, the three Trump appointees on the bench also dissembled during their confirmation hearings when asked about Roe vs Wade, the 1973 judgement that established the right to terminate unwanted or risky pregnancies.

Notwithstanding the outrage it has sparked, last week`s verdict did not come as a shock, given that it conforms pretty closely with the draft opinion by Justice Samuel Alito leaked last month. But perhaps the entire trend should hardly be a surprise.

After all, at international `women`s health` conferences over the decades, the US has fairly consistently voted alongside some of the worst transgressors against the equality of the sexes,including Saudi Arabia and Iran. Furthermore, under some administrations it has withdrawn aid from organisations facilitating contraception in parts of the world where the rate of population growth poses a serious problem.

And besides, the Equal Rights Amendment passed by the US Senate 50 years ago wasn`t approved by enough states before the deadline for its ratification passed.

It remains in limbo, much like the United States itself. A majority of Americans of every significant faith agree that abortion on demand should be available in all or almost all circumstances. Evangelicals are the only segment of society where it`s the other way around. The American Taliban, as they are sometimes described, believe in a God-given right to prescribe what women can do with their bodies.

There is a monumental irony in the fact that women`s rights were paraded as one of the excuses for invading Afghanistan. One would like to know where were the `pro-life` activists when children were being killed by American artillery in Afghanistan, Iraq or Yemen or, for that matter, being bayonetted in Vietnam half a century ago by `our boys`? At a Trump rally in Illinois on the week-end, congresswomanMary Miller applauded the supreme court verdict as a `historic victory for white life`. Her campaign claimed she meant to say `right to life`. But it wasn`t necessarily a Freudian slip. Just last year she declared, `Hitler was right on one thing.

He said, `Whoever has the youth has the future`.` Yes, many people remember the Hitler Youth. Donald Trump himself, appropriately taking credit for the supreme court verdict after all, he appointed the three judges who made it a slam dunk hailed Miller at the rally as a `warrior for our movement and our values`.

A lot more of her ilk could end up in the House of Representatives in November.

There is no clear evidence so far that the national pro-abortion majority can pre-empt a Republican majority in the House, or prevent the Democrats from losing their fairly pointless parity in the Senate.

That, in turn, suggests Senator Elizabeth Warren and Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are pretty much whistling in the wind when they bring up the worthyideas of enhancing the supreme court bench or impeaching the unworthy errant justices.

It may not be impossible to halt America`s regressive trajectory towards the kind of misogynist dystopia envis-aged in Canadian novelist Margaret Atwood`s The Handmaid`s Tale, but there is little evidence so far of the kind of popular mobilisation and the federal and state legal and legislative efforts that would be required to stave off the extremist on slaught.

More alarmingly accurate, perhaps, is the scenario sketched out by former PEN America president Francine Prose, who worries about how great the shock would be `to wake up one morning and find that while we were driving the kids to soccer practice and enjoying that welcoming after-work cocktail, more and more of our rights had been stripped away … The overturning of Roe v Wade should shock us … into looking beyond the dance floor of the Titanic and spotting that iceberg, looming in our path, not so very far away.

The analogy isn`t all that far-fetched.

President Joe Biden seems keen to `save Ukraine` by gifting it the firepower to prolong the war, but on the home front he is frequently missing in action as the retrograde Putinesque elements gather force, presaging unpleasant consequences on a global scale. m mahir.dawn@gmail.com

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Amendments in the National Accountability Ordinance, (NAO) 1999 (XVIII of 1999) through the National Accountability (Second Amendment) Act, 2022 are in conformity with constitutional commands and various verdicts of the apex court on the protection of life and liberty, safeguards as to arrest and detention, right to fair trial and due process.

Article 8 of the constitution unequivocally stresses upon the fact that laws inconsistent with or in derogation of fundamental rights are void. The National Accountability Ordinance, (NAO) was a classic example of denial of the fundamental rights enshrined in the constitution and was used for political engineering and victimization for decades. The frequent and blatant abuse of the NAO against political rivals during the last four years sufficiently establishes that the NAO was nothing other than a draconian tool for persecution.

Upholding constitutional guarantees to citizens has always been stressed upon in light of the dictums laid down by the superior courts. The NAO was a void law in light of Article 8 of the constitution as the constitution stays at the top of the pyramid of the legal hierarchy and all other laws are subservient to the constitution; if any piece of legislation is repugnant to the constitution it is void ab initio. The law of the land prohibits forcing someone to give witness against himself but under the repealed NAO, this principle was completely shifted in another direction to force the accused to prove his/her innocence. On this sole score, the repealed NAO was not sustainable. Besides, it unprecedentedly provided for a 90-day physical remand with no legal provision for bail even after such a long and ruthless period of physical remand. This was against the settled judicial precedents, so the apex judiciary used to exercise its constitutional jurisdiction to entertain bail petitions.

The critics of amendments in the NAO have badly failed to appreciate Article 10 (4) of constitution, which categorically prohibits prevention detention except persons acting in a manner prejudicial to the integrity, security or defence of Pakistan etc. The promulgation of the amendment law will protect these constitutional rights as well as defend the inviolability of the dignity of man, privacy of home and protection against torture for extracting evidence.

Regrettably, upon instigation of the PTI government, NAB authorities badly misused their powers and gravely ruined the dignity of the citizens of Pakistan, violating basic human rights. Not only politicians but also government functionaries, civil bureaucracy and business community stopped working due to a fear of maltreatment by NAB. The apex court of the country noticed the atrocity of NAB authorities under the grab of the repealed NAO. Once former CJ Asif Saeed Khan Khosa while taking the accountability watchdog to task asked: “What does NAB do after all? Is NAB’s only purpose to make cases? Its only purpose is not to make cases; the only purpose is not to ‘pakar dhakkar’.”

Shifting of the burden of proof on NAB authorities is in line with the direction of Justice Khosa: “registering a case is not the only objective; NAB’s purpose is also to prove a case and have a suspect punished…NAB should also attach evidence for those who it has made cases against.” The CJ also pointed out that NAB law does not mean that it can be used “whatever the way you like”. He remarked that, “we used to hear that in the past, NAB law was misused to change political affiliations. But now, the civil laws are being treated under the criminal laws, and civil cases are also being heard under the NAB law, and it (NAB law) should not be misused.”

The amendment act rectifies the flaws pointed out in various dictums of the SC, as in another case a three-member bench of Supreme Court held that “the onus of providing tangible material and evidence against the accused was on NAB.” The view taken by the court affirmed that its utmost priority is to protect the civil liberties and fundamental freedoms of the individual which has been done through this amendment law. On a number of occasions, the Supreme Court found NAB authorities violating the well-celebrated constitutional principles of rights to fair trial and due process. The amendments to the law will protect the individual’s rights, improving the social and international fabric of Pakistan. In this context, the Supreme Court’s bail order in Khawaja Saad Rafiq and Khawaja Salman Rafiq’s case – who were detained for 15 months without reasonable grounds – held that the accountability bureau had “violated the rights to fair trial and due process.”

The NAB law being in conflict with the constitutional provisions, coupled with its performance, demanded it be either repealed or revised. NAB could not hide from constitutional courts itd abuse of power in order to hamper the freedom of innocent people without any legal justification and evidence. That is why the country’s top judges have repeatedly lashed out at the performance of NAB, observing that it was “no longer fulfilling its purpose and being used for exploitation.” While heading the three-member bench of the Supreme Court, then CJ Gulzar Ahmad observed that “NAB has become a hurdle to the very role it was supposed to play for the betterment of the country. The purpose for which it was formed is now lost.”

On all these illegalities and violation of the constitution, parliament could not just choose to shut its eyes. A vigilant and prudent parliament is always expected to respond to address such issues promptly. Due to all these anomalies, NAB has lost its credibility, respect and justification of existence in the eyes of all the pillars of the state. People – including government functionaries and the business community – no longer trust in NAB to get fair treatment. Therefore, this enactment is a fair and legitimate response by parliament to protect the fundamental rights of the citizens as guaranteed by the constitution of Pakistan. It embeds all the possible provisions to address the maladministration and abuse of powers highlighted by the apex court of the country.

The writer is the federal minister for human rights.

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