Pakistan on Sunday rejected UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk’s concern about the 27th constitutional amendment as “ungrounded and misplaced apprehensions”. In a statement issued in Geneva on Friday, the human rights chief said the latest constitutional amendment, like the 26th amendment last year, had been adopted without broad consultation and debate with the legal community and wider civil society.
He added that the “hastily adopted” amendments undermined judicial independence and raised concerns about military accountability. The Foreign Office in a press release, said that “like all parliamentary democracies, all legislation as well as any amendment to the constitution remain the exclusive domain of the elected representatives of the people of Pakistan”.
“While Pakistan gives due importance to the work of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, it is regrettable that Pakistan’s views and ground realities were not reflected in the statement issued,” it said. It said Pakistan remains “fully committed to protecting, promoting and upholding human rights, human dignity, basic freedoms and the rule of law as enshrined in the constitution”.
“We urge the High Commissioner to respect the sovereign decisions of Pakistan’s parliament and avoid commentary that reflects political bias and misinformation,” it said. Earlier this month, Pakistan’s joint parliamentary committee of the Senate and National Assembly approved the 27th constitutional amendment bill with the opposition alleging that the Government was sounding “the death knell for the Supreme Court”.
The amendment proposes a change in Article 243, seeking to abolish the ‘Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee’ and introduce a new ‘Chief of Defence Forces’. Other proposals under the same amendment include establishing a Federal Constitutional Court and reducing the powers of the Supreme Court.
