Pakistan President accuses staff of playing him on controversial bills shielding military from criticism

Pakistan’s President Arif Alvi has denied approving the two controversial bills, which make it an offence to reveal the identities of military intelligence officers and propose jail terms for defaming the army. Introduced earlier this month, the Official Secrets (Amend­m­ent) Bill and the Pakistan Army (Amend­ment) Bill provoked bitter debate in the Pakistan National Assembly. Alvi, who “disagreed” with the bills, asked his staff to return the bills to the Parliament unapproved in time to not stop them from being effective. He had ten days to either sign the bills or return them to the Parliament with some observations, failing this the bill would be taken as passed by the president. However, his staff, he alleged, didn’t obey his order and delayed the return to let them assume effect. “I did not sign Official Secrets Amendment Bill 2023 & Pakistan Army Amendment Bill 2023 as I disagreed with these laws. I asked my staff to return the bills unsigned within the stipulated time to make them ineffective. I confirmed from them many times whether they have been returned & was assured that they were. However, I have found out today that my staff undermined my will,” he wrote in a post on X. President Alvi’s statement can throw the legality of the laws into question. However, Pakistan’s interim law minister Ahmed Irfan Aslam accused Alvi of “purposely delaying the assent”, and returning the bills with neither assent nor observations, according to BBC. Aslam added that since the bills were not received from the president even after 10 days, they automatically became law. According to a gazette from the Senate Secretariat the bills were “deemed to have been assented to by the president”. While one bill recommends a three-year jail term and a fine of up to 1 crore rupees for anyone who discloses the identity of an intelligence official, informant or source, the other imposes a jail term of up to five years on anyone who discloses sensitive information relating to national security. Pakistan’s main opposition party, former prime minister Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) and the coalition partners of the ruling Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz (PML-N) have criticised the bills as “draconian laws” passed in haste and without discussion and prudence. And the laws are already being used to arrest opposition members. PTI’s Shah Mehmood Qureshi was arrested on Saturday under the Official Secrets Act. His party claimed that Qureshi was detained for holding a press conference where he challenged the postponement of the election. But the government accuse him of leaking the contents of a secret diplomatic cable for political motives. President Alvi got the bills before parliament was dissolved on 9 August. Initially, the aim of dissolving the Parliament was to hold fresh elections in November. However, after the electoral commission said the electoral boundaries must be redrawn to reflect fresh census data, the polls have now been postponed until February. In the interim, the country will be under a caretaker government. The intelligence services in Pakistan have been regularly accused of illegally detaining the members of the opposition, dissidents, activists and journalists, and human rights observers note the increasing number of disappearances every month. The PTI has also said that it will take the disputed bills to the Supreme Court and declared its “complete support” for Alvi, who’s among the founding members of the party. Former prime minister Khan’s arrest in May saw violent protests in which even military cantonments were targeted. Since then, the PTI has been systematically targeted. Their key leaders, including Khan, were given jail sentences over a variety of charges.