Pakistan amends law to extend armed forces chiefs' service tenure

Tariq Butt, Correspondent

In a major development, Pakistan's parliament on Monday increased the tenure of the chiefs of the Pakistan Army, Pakistan Navy and Pakistan Air Force to five years from three and also the enhanced number of judges of the Supreme Court from 17 to 34.

The parliament also increased the number of judges of the Islamabad High Court (IHC) to 12 from nine.

The Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) raised a lot of hue and cry against the legislation, but could not block the treasury benches from aggressively pursuing its legislative agenda.

The government showed a top speed in doing the legislation in both the Senate and National Assembly in a short span of time. First, the National Assembly passed the laws followed by the Senate a few hours later on Monday.

The bills relating to the increase in the number of judges were presented by Law Minister Azam Nazeer Tarar.

The amendment about the increase in the number of judges in the Supreme Court was meant to clear the backlog of cases, and that after the 26th amendment, judges will also be available to form the constitutional benches, Defence Minister Khawaja Asif said.

"Our bar bodies and the Supreme Court Bar Association have been recommending this for a while now so that the four-bar court registries in Karachi, Quetta, Peshawar, and Lahore can relieve their thousands of pending cases. This number has been left open for the judicial commission," the minister said.

Asif tabled the amendment bills, aiming to extend the tenure of the chief of army staff, chief of naval staff, and chief of air staff from three to five years.

The government brought all the bills in the parliament through a supplementary agenda.

The PTI took a strong exception to the passage of the bills and continued chanting slogans throughout the sessions.

PTI Chairman Barrister Gohar Ali Khan, speaking outside the parliament, decried the passage of the bills. "Today, democracy has been changed into a monarchy", he said.

PTI's Leader of the Opposition in the National Assembly, Omar Ayub Khan, said that the fake regime modifying the service chiefs' tenure is not a good thing for the country and the armed forces.