President must bear matching responsibility with regard to situation in Karachi, Balochistan, other parts of country.
ISLAMABAD: Commonsense demands that power and responsibility should go hand in hand. Accordingly, more power should entail more responsibility proportionately. Guess who is the most powerful person in Pakistan today. It is undoubtedly the president of Pakistan, despite there being several amendments to the Constitution to provide for a different scenario. In a parliamentary system, the head of state is supposed to be a figurehead. In our country, conversely, it is the prime minister who is the figurehead and the president is the de-facto chief executive of the state.
With all powers concentrated in the presidency, the incumbent president must be held equally accountable for anything that goes wrong in the country. In the light of this power-responsibility equation in Pakistan, the president must bear matching responsibility with regard to the situation in Karachi and Balochistan as well as other parts of the country. We may be on the way to losing the battle for sustainable democracy if the most powerful man goes scot-free while the country burns to ashes.
BA Malik
Published in The Express Tribune, February 21st, 2013.
