THE 11-party alliance of the opposition – Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM) – has announced a ‘Charter of Pakistan’ which includes points that hardly anyone can disagree. It envisages, among other things, ensuring supremacy and protection of federal, democratic, parliamentary and Islamic constitution’s supremacy; independence of Parliament; distancing establishment and intelligence agencies from politics; establishing an independent judiciary; reforms for free and fair elections; elimination of extremism and terrorism; and introduction of an emergency economic package to eliminate poverty, inflation and unemployment.
These are the issues that matter much for people of Pakistan and realization of these goals would surely help ensure stability that is missing in the system since long with serious consequences for peace, security and economic well-being of the people. There are no two opinions about supremacy and independence of Parliament but the question arises who will make this happen. This is because politicians and political parties, who are supposed to work for the noble cause, prefer to remain in perpetual state of infighting and we have observed that Parliament was not given its due importance by the successive governments. With the exception of Syed Yousaf Raza Gilani, no Prime Minister bothered to attend sessions of the National Assembly and the Senate regularly sparking strong protests by members. Quorum was a serious issue during tenure of PML(N) and the phenomenon continues to-date as even Ministers do not bother to attend sessions of the two houses. Independence of judiciary is inconceivable when there are no guarantees that only men of integrity would be appointed as judges whereas both the Government and the Opposition are unable to agree on recommendations to make the electoral process genuinely transparent and fair. Elimination of poverty, inflation and unemployment is also a commendable cause as this is directly related to the sufferings of the masses and, therefore, an emergency economic package is direly needed. However, the modus operandi being adopted by the opposition to realize these goals is not appropriate as street agitation would complicate things further.
