The outcome of the debate recently staged in the National Assembly over the bill which was supposed
to provide protection to women did not come as a surprise to anybody and least of all to the groups agitating for justice for women and their struggle to find a place in the sun.

All it did was to endorse the view commonly held that the government never really had any intention of getting rid of the laws that victimise and are discriminatory to women, the minorities or other disadvantaged groups.

In spite of the commitments made by President Musharraf about empowering and protecting women against arbitrary laws and the capricious behaviour of men who have repeatedly misused the tenets of religion, the criminal laws remain stubbornly on the statute books and if the obscurantist lobby could have its way, would be etched in stone.

This is not to suggest that the president has not done his bit. A short while ago he ordered the release of a lot of women prisoners who had been locked up under the controversial Zina clause in the Hudood Ordinances, which has contributed considerably to tarnishing the image of the country abroad and projecting what many foreigners see as a repressive Stone Age culture.

His supporters also believe that in spite of his close relationship with members of the six-party religious alliance, it was he who prodded and goaded the president of the Muslim League to start the ball rolling on the amendment issue, which hit a few snags along the way.

In spite of this, most human rights groups believe the government legislators were taking part in a grand charade and went through the motions in a totally detached manner, as if they were in a hurry to get it over with, irrespective of the outcome.

The travesty nevertheless had its moments. Last Tuesday this newspaper carried the headline that the government had yielded to the MMA (Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal) on the Hudood laws. On Wednesday the newspaper asked the pertinent question: "What made the PML (Pakistan Muslim League) turn to the MMA?" On Thursday we learnt that the Hudood Bill had been "put on hold… indefinitely".

And on Friday the nation was informed that the MMA had rejected the "agreed" draft on the grounds that "the government had not included in the new draft several points which had been earlier agreed to in a meeting of the ulema nominated by the government and the MMA". The new draft was totally unacceptable to the MMA and the "flaws" were communicated to Maulana Fazlur Rehman who subsequently had a meeting with the president of the PML and the chief minister of Punjab.

Before the leader of the opposition had been apprised of the "objectionable" passages, it certainly looked as if the sail no longer had to tack against the wind. An earlier statement issued after the meeting between Chaudhry Shujaat and Chaudhry Parvez Elahi and a delegation of the MMA led by Fazlur Rehman pointed out that "the bill was in complete conformity with the Holy Koran and Sunnah" and that "after lengthy deliberations of the ulema committee on the amendment bill... and its scrutiny from every aspect of the Holy Koran and Sunnah, leaders of all parties were of the opinion that there is nothing in the proposed bill which was against the Holy Koran and Sunnah".

Apparently, agreement had been reached "on all basic points" of the protection of the bill on women’s rights. It was stressed that "parliamentarians should consider the new draft of the bill realistically, take a proper decision and avoid making it a political issue". One would have thought that this is what the legislators had been doing all along. Apparently, this was not the case.

Later on we learned that Maulana Mufti Munibur Rehman had pointed out that "Chaudhry Shujaat and Parvez Elahi had invited ulema from all over the country to consider the amended bill as it was an important national issue as well as a religious obligation".

What is the reader supposed to make of this statement? Does it mean that we are back to square one and that the whole process of negotiations will be repeated? Or does it advocate that after a few rounds of discussion, during which the bruised ego of the MMA legislators will be assuaged, and after another compromise has been reached there might, after all, be a light at the end of the tunnel?

A recent seminar held in Karachi pointed out that even if the debate in the National Assembly has been a fruitless and pointless exercise and if nothing substantial is likely to emerge from future negotiations, it has, in a sense, been a positive development. After all, this is the first time during the tenure of the present administration that both the government and the religious alliance by implication have tacitly admitted that the Hudood Ordinances were man-made and were not divine – as earlier stated by the gentlemen of the cloth. This means that the ordinances are not sacrosanct and are subject to amendment – like the Constitution.

It is also a positive development because there is evidence to suggest that certain sections of the six-party religious alliance might have begun to have second thoughts on the issue. The very fact that the MMA agreed to consider the amendments in the first place shows a change of heart. At the present time the MMA holds most of the trumps. As long as the government does not try to steal Maulana Fazlur Rehman’s thunder, they might be able to score a few points.

The MMA still has an abiding grip on the popular imagination in the province bordering Afghanistan and in pockets in Punjab and a certain amount of nuisance value in Karachi. The government’s strategy to take them along on the rocky road might yet pay dividends.

There have been a few interesting pointers in the fallout over the controversial bill. The first is that while certain MNAs (members of the National Assembly) of the government party cooperated with the PPP (Pakistan People’s Party), members of the Nawaz faction of the Muslim League wouldn’t touch the issue with a bargepole and have demonstrated that when it comes to standing up for women’s rights they are as retrogressive as the holy warriors.

The second is that on this particular issue the MQM (Muttahida Qaumi Movement) is sitting on the same side of the fence as the PPP. This is an interesting development. Ideological differences notwithstanding, these two parties appear to be the only ones in the country that have a positive attitude to women’s problems. One has to only take a peek at the number of women workers in the MQM to see what liberation is all about.

To get to the genesis of this controversial issue one has to go back to that fateful day in late March 2004 when PPP MNA Sherry Rehman decided to ruffle a few stodgy feathers and send a few shock waves through a moribund assembly. The issue was heatedly debated for three weeks on every private members’ day and had been simmering on the back-burner ever since, until its recent re-emergence in the Assembly.

What was significant was that this was the first time in 25 years, after Zia-ul-Haq had bequeathed to the nation the dreaded Hudood Ordinances, that a woman had the courage to stand up and fight.

For over 25 years Pakistani women have lived under the heel of the repressive laws, one of which blatantly stated that a woman could be locked up on mere suspicion. Until President Musharraf stepped in to free women prisoners who were being held for allegedly committing zina (adultery), the warden of the jail might just as well have thrown away the key, given the record of the courts in this department.

To ensure that nobody unscrewed any of the bolts that kept the old musket in place, the Muslim League government invariably felt the need to enlist the help of the clergy to bail them out of a sticky situation. How else can one explain the fact that even though the treasury benches had a pretty tight grip on the proceedings in the current debate, they still felt the need to send a helicopter to Maulana Fazlur Rehman in his summer retreat in Murree so that he could once again upset the apple cart? Everything points to the fact that the journey will be a long and torturous one.

(Anwer Mooraj’s column appears regularly in Dawn.)

(Courtesy: Dawn)