A shameful travesty

Anybody who thought the NA speaker was occupying a position above partisanship was disabused of that on September 5

Anybody who thought that the speaker of the National Assembly was occupying a position above petty politics and partisanship was disabused of that on September 5. The speaker dismissed all references seeking the disqualification of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif at the same time as sending similar references against two of the leaders of the PTI, namely Imran Khan and Jahangir Tareen, to the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) for adjudication within 90 days. It must be noted that Speaker Ayaz Sadiq is a member of the PML-N.

To label this as a shameful travesty of what the role of the speaker ought to be understates the case by several orders of magnitude. If Pakistan is to have a parliament modelled on the Mother of Parliaments in the UK, then it needs to adopt the traditions and protocols of that august (though to be scrupulously fair, not always honest or honourable) body where the impartiality of the speaker — essentially the referee — is of paramount importance. The speaker for the term of his or her office has to stand aside from their party of origin and see that fair play is the order of the day — every day — and that partiality has no place in their decisions or rulings. Whilst Mr Sadiq is correct in saying that his post is neither a court nor an investigation agency, at the same time, he is happy to make subjective value-judgments about which it is simply not possible to discern anything like balance or indeed moderation. He has informed the ECP of the references against the the prime minister but expects nothing further beyond that, whilst he also expects the ECP to go about its business and investigate the PTI and its officers with due diligence, having judged that the case against them is of greater merit than that against the PML-N and its officers. All of the above notwithstanding, no political party and most of the individuals concerned in this matter are exactly stainless in terms of matters parliamentary, but this blatantly partisan display by the speaker tops off a distinctly unpalatable parliamentary layer-cake. We expect no early improvement.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 7^th, 2016.

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