Very quietly, Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz has taken the line of least resistance on the issue of the controversial religion column in the machine-readable passport (MRP) by passing the buck to the provinces instead of standing firm on the decision to not have the column. This was predictable. There are deep differences within the federal cabinet and the ruling Pakistan Muslim League-Q on the issue of the religion column with the group headed by party president Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain supporting the inclusion of the column.
The controversy was originally started by the Mutahidda Majlis-e-Amal which argues, along with other clerics, that the MRP would be used by the Ahmadiyya community — declared non-Muslim since 1974 — to travel to the holy places for pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia. Even so, despite earlier resolve to settle the issue quickly, the Aziz government has continued to drag its feet and has now decided to leave the matter to the provincial governments. Interestingly, the interior ministry has strongly recommended the exclusion of the column, while the religion minister, Ijaz-ul Haq, continues to support its inclusion. Haq is supported in this by some party stalwarts who are ideologically right-of-centre. They are not prepared to accept the logic of General Pervez Musharraf's enlightened moderation even as their political clout is owed to Musharraf's system. The interior ministry actually submitted a detailed summary on January 5, 2005 to explain why it did not support the inclusion of the religious column in the new MRP. After it was first announced that the religious column would be omitted, Aziz found himself in a fix when former premier and PMLQ president, Shujaat Hussain threw his weight behind the forces demanding the inclusion of the column in the MRP. The ruling party, in a resolution, asked the government to include the omitted column introduced in 1980 by General Zia-ul Haq. Indeed, Shujaat actually went ahead and announced — without formally consulting Aziz — that the religious column would be put back in the passport. |