Chairman Senate Mian Raza Rabbani has urged students to follow teachings and ideology of the father of the nation Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah in letter and spirit for a better future. Addressing a function at a private university in Karachi on Saturday, he said Quaid-e-Azam wanted to make Pakistan a welfare state, which should be materialized.
He said "the vision of Quaid-e-Azam has been lost; we only pay lip-service and tributes on his birth and death anniversary. His speech of August 1947 has been deliberately suppressed; this speech clearly stated the purpose and the direction that the new state of Pakistan was to take." The Quaid envisaged Pakistan to be a tolerant, progressive, welfare state with a federal parliamentary form of government. Unfortunately, this character of the Pakistani state was changed and it was converted into a national security state. He further said thereafter the democratic process was interrupted at regular intervals by military dictators, adding dictatorship was an anti-thesis to federalism and parliamentary democracy.
He continued that earlier dictators abrogated the constitution and created instruments of their own choice, after the enactment of 1973 constitution no dictator had the courage to abrogate it as it was consensus document within parliament and the federating units, therefore, it was held in abeyance or suspension. Zia ul Haq through the eighth amendment changed the basic structure of the 1973 Constitution and converted it into a quasi-presidential form of the government.
The Constitution 1973 was defaced by the eighth Constitutional Amendment with over 50 amendments seeking to centralise power at Islamabad at the cost of provincial autonomy. This caused polarization between the federating units amongst themselves and the federation; it led to a feeling of deprivation and hit national unity. The 18th Constitutional Amendment converted Pakistan to the concept of participatory federalism and devolved seventeen (17) federal ministries, repealed the Concurrent Legislative List, gave ownership to the provinces of their natural resources and strengthened the council of common interest.
The Council of Common Interest after the 18th Amendment is a body that is parallel to the Federal Cabinet. That is why in the 18th Amendment, it was provided that it would be headed by the Prime Minister, constituted within a 30 days of his taking oath and will have its own independent secretariat.
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