Sharif’s dialogue proposal unheard of says Durrani

Former senator says move infringes on separation of power enshrined under the Constitution

A proposal to establish a ‘new social contract’ of dialogue between judges, generals and politicians was unheard of in any parliamentary democracy and would require a change in the country’s constitution to bring about.

This was stated by former federal minister Muhammad Ali Durrani in a statement issued on Saturday.

Responding to the suggestion made by Punjab Chief Minister Shehbaz Sharif, Durrani said it was open treachery.



“The House of Sharif shelved the Constitution of 1973 and disgraced the doctrine of ‘sanctity of vote’ themselves by offering an anti-constitutional proposal’’ Durrani said, who has served two-terms in the upper house of Parliament as a Senator.

“In public, they were vehemently advocating and claiming to even wage a war for the protection of this right. Now, altogether, they have abandoned this philosophy of upholding the division of powers defined among institutions and are suggesting now something completely alien instead. This was based on their complete ignorance of the Constitution,” the former federal minister argued.

He said at a time when elected governments were completing their stipulated tenures according to the Constitution, bringing stability in the democratic system, the Sharifs were once again, through their ill-advised proposition, were attempting to disrupt this flow of transfer of the much-desired public mandate.

“The Constitution has clearly demarcated duties and functions among state institutions. It has a vested role in guarding the Constitution and dispensing justice to the judiciary while the armed forces were given the sacred responsibility of protection and defence of the motherland. Engaging judiciary and armed forces, in such situation, was a mere ‘Machiavellian move’ by rulers just to save their skin from accountability.



Durrani advised the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) President Shahbaz from committing such a slip up of involving judges and generals and politics.

“Whatever is happening with the Sharif family was due to allegations of money laundering which had surfaced from the United Kingdom and the West as the United Nations and the international community, through stringent laws, has joined hands against those corrupt leaders who looted the exchequer of developing countries such as Pakistan,” he added.

Shabaz on Friday had urged politicians, generals and judges to sit together and build a new Pakistan as he called for resolving confrontations between institutions through reconciliation.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 25^th, 2018.