ISLAMABAD: Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) announced on Tuesday that it will challenge the Protection of Pakistan Ordinance (PPO) in the Supreme Court, claiming that it has the support of Muthaida Qaumi Movement (MQM) and Jamat-e-Islamai (JI).
The announcement was made the PTI chairman Imran Khan and the vice chairman PTI Shah Mehmood Qureshi outside the Parliament House in Islamabad on Tuesday.
The National Assembly on Monday evening passed the Protection of Pakistan bill with a majority vote amidst protest by the opposition parties.
The opposition parties opposed the bill and staged a walk out from the house, terming the bill regressive and extra-constitutional.
The PPO, approved by President Mamnoon Hussain last year, is a decree that declares all peace-disrupting elements as ‘enemies of the state’, and states protection of life to be the state’s top priority.
A few clauses from the ordinance:
• Every possible state instrument and resource will be deployed to defeat and frustrate all or any nefarious attempt to create disorder.
• The cancer of syndicated crime, in all its forms and manifestations, shall be responded by proportionate use of state force under the law.
• Joint investigation teams shall be constituted to conduct investigations by security agencies and police in all heinous crimes committed in areas where civil armed forces are invited to aid civil power.
• Those involved in syndicated crime shall be relocated to other parts of the country for transparency and fair trial.
Special jails shall be designated to detain hardened criminals and the minimum quantum of punishments is now re-determined at ten years.
• The state will not allow Afghan immigrants or other foreign nationals to be used for terrorist purposes.
