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President Asif Ali Zardari will soon announce abolition of Frontier Crimes Regulations (FCR) to bring the areas being run under this law at par with other parts of the country, presidential spokesman Farhatullah Baber said on Friday.
Speaking at the Roundtable on State of Democracy in Pakistan organised by Pakistan Institute of Legislative Development and Transparency (PILDAT), he said that Parliamentary Committee on Balochistan, constituted by President Zardari would give concrete recommendations to help end deprivation of the province.
He said that political parties and governments often made serious mistakes in the process of democratic revolution and currently the government was passing through this process. Dysfunctional parliament, he said, is the inheritance from the previous dictatorial regime of General Pervez Musharraf (retired).
Truth and wisdom emerges only through discussions on realities, he said and urged the participants to share the realities unveiling all the shortcomings of the current system.
He said that Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) could claim that the country has moved towards democracy, adding the state of democracy is good currently. He said that instead of all the setbacks the present government was democratic and legitimate. The democratic process made significant progress in previous one year, he said, adding that there is no mechanism that can change the system overnight.
He regretted that that parliament was not strong, however, it gained strength in the previous one year. He applauded the Public Accounts Committees (PAC) performance as it is headed by the opposition leader. He apprised the participants that for the first time in the history of the country the defence budget was tabled in the parliament for debate and many of its recommendations were incorporated in the final budget document.
Speaking at the roundtable, executive director PILDAT, Ahmad Bilal Mehboob, said that democracy was in transition in Pakistan as the country recently came out of the clutches of the military authoritarianism.
He said that it was also the responsibility of the voters to understand the parliamentary working, adding the key factor in improvement of the democratic process are transparency, accountability public effective involvement.
He pinpointed that parliament should be the supreme authority for appointment of chief election commission. "The Inter Parliamentary Union (IPU) must involve youth and allow them to visit the session of the National Assembly and Senate its standing committee to keep them abreast with the changing national scene", he opined.
Renowned economist, Akbar Zaidi, said that better bureaucracy, decentralisation and good governance were the pillars of strong democracy and the incumbent government must consider the difference between good governance and good democracy.
He said that the challenges for the democratic government were fanaticism, militancy, collapsing economy and war within the country. He condemned that current democratic government economic programme was gifted by International Monetary
Fund (IMF) and the PPP:
government had reshuffled Finance Ministers Ishaq Dar, Naveed Qamar and appointed an Advisor to the Prime minister on Finance. "Finance and interior ministries are not headed by the elected members of the parliament which is another unconstitutional practice in the current democratic government and 17th amendment is also a major lapse", he lamented.
Renowned analyst Dr Hasan Askari Rizvi said that major setback in current democracy was that the political leaders had not managed crisis situation and condemned that they could not peruse self-righteousness. He emphasised that terrorism, price hike, agitation in general masses on unemployment and extremism are the issues to be tackled urgently.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2009

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