EDITORIAL: The act of rowdiness that beset the AJK assembly on Monday was no exception to what happens in the elected houses of Pakistan and elsewhere. The mobile phone which Law Minister Sardar Faheem Akhtar Rabbani threw at former premier Raja Farooq Haider missed the target, but how the generality on the street reacted to this needs recall.
As is the common practice, the speaker adjourned the proceedings to meet on Wednesday. And over the next few hours there were exchanges of apologies and the ruckus ended as the two sides agreed to let bygones be bygones. However, that did not happen on the street.
The pro-Raja Farooq Haider activists made to the office of the law minister in the civil secretariat and vandalized it. They also blocked all main roads connecting the capital city of Muzaffarabad with rest of the country and lifted the blockade only when requested by Raja Farooq Haider himself.
Clearly, what happened inside the house was taken as routine but people who voted these members to be their representatives took it differently. The voters expect their representatives to take their job seriously and do law-making in order to be in tune with the calls of time.
And that is the case also with other elected houses of the country, particularly the National Assembly of Pakistan, which in the absence of main opposition, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, functions more as a stamp on the government plans and policies than as a platform for national debate, which is the hallmark of any democratic process. And that one-sided legislation tends to be bereft of justice and therefore remains controversial, earning it disapproval of a significant segment of population.
This is a legislative abnormality and blame for it is shared both by the ruling coalition and the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf alike. The voters who elected those unruly members of AJK assembly and speechless members of National Assembly look on it in helpless disbelief as their representatives continue to embarrass them and the country.
In reality, the ongoing tussle for power between the PDM (Pakistan Democratic Movement)-led government and Imran Khan puts them together in the battle against the people who are final victims of that battle. Simply stated, the ongoing power struggle in the country is the gladiators’ muscle-flexing while the generality is just the spectators. Theirs’ is not the fight for democratic ambience in Pakistan, theirs’ is the fight for political, and perhaps dictatorial, power. And no wonder, not once but always the people of Pakistan welcomed the military as it overthrew the querulous civilian dispensations and took over the governance of the state.
Azad Jammu and Kashmir is not a very prosperous land, nor is it blessed with rich natural resources like oil and iron ore. Just like Pakistan it is poor, but its assembly members enjoy the special perks and privileges, as is the case with rest of the elected houses in the country. The answer to question whether these houses deliver to the people the kind of legislation that is needed (millions of cases are pending in courts because the law on the statute book is no more relevant to needs of the hour) will be in the negative.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2022