ISLAMABAD: Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) leader Senator Mian Raza Rabbani said that the attack of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) on the 18th Constitutional Amendment reflects an autocratic, centrist mindset and it also exposes the hands behind the debate on a Presidential form of government.
“The proverb ‘a bad workman always blames his tools’ or in Urdu ‘naach na jaane angan tedha’ is the call of the government as it has failed to implement its election theme of Change or Tabdeeli. How has the 18th Amendment and Parliament stood in the way of the government to deal with and bring before law the various mafias, cartels and hoarders? The government has failed because it supports cronyism,” former chairman Senate Senator Rabbani said in a statement on Monday.
“The 18th Amendment and Parliament is the life line that holds the Federation. Any attempt to roll back the 18th Amendment will give rise to extreme movements of nationalism and even federalists can raise the slogan, let the provinces collect all the taxes and the Federation place its expenditures before the provinces, which verify and meet them,” he said.
How the 18th Amendment or Parliament has prevented the government from controlling the record price hike, corruption, depreciation of the rupee, delayed decisions on the import of gas etc, asked Rabbani.
He said that it is incorrect to say that the Parliament or the Senate has stood in the way of legislation. He said that the government has bulldozed bills by overriding rules, bringing Supplementary Orders of Day and horse trading. He said that following a ‘foreign agenda of colonisation of Pakistan’, all bills of subjugation to the IMF were passed but legislation for the people cannot be, the reason being the lack of political will of the government.
“As the ‘Day of Judgment’ draws near the government is trying to find whipping boys to place their failures on ‘at times it is the bureaucracy, which is not taking decisions’,” he said.
“At times it is the Judiciary which is creating obstacles in the way of the government, and now; the 18th Amendment and Parliament. No institution functioning under the Constitution or the Constitution itself has been spared to cover for the collective failure of the political government,” he said.
He said that any tinkering with the present Constitutional frame will have disastrous effects on the Federation.
However, Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) Vice President Senator Sherry Rehman said that statement of the prime minister about 18th Constitutional Amendment and Parliamentary democracy is condemnable.
She said in tweets on Monday that in an interview to CNN, the prime minister said that problems have arisen since the 18th Amendment. She said that the 18th Amendment was the second largest consensus document after the Constitution of Pakistan.
“Whatever presidential powers you want, Asif Zardari has transferred them to Parliament,” she said. She said that the federal government is responsible for non-cooperation with the provinces, while PTI has a government in three provinces.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2022