5th SAARC speaker section: Largest forum of legislators proposed

'We should resolve to build peace and consolidate democracy by strengthening trust between our people and parliaments'

ISLAMABAD:

Speaker National Assembly Dr Fehmida Mirza has said the South Asian Association Regional Cooperation (Saarc) nations should work for the creation of the South Asian Parliament to ensure sustainable peace and prosperity in the region.

“It will be the largest forum of legislators, commanding the trust of 1.7 billion people, enabling our respective countries to devise sustainable solutions to numerous bilateral and multilateral problems,” Fehmida said in her address at the working session of the 5th Saarc speakers and parliamentarians’ summit in New Delhi. Her office released the speech to media persons on Sunday.

“We should resolve to build peace, ignite prosperity and consolidate democracy by strengthening trust between our people and parliaments,” she said, adding that it was rather unfortunate that democracy could not be consolidated in all Saarc nations due to the ‘deeply entrenched authoritarianism’ in these societies.

Referring to the cooperation between Saarc nations, Mirza said Pakistan recently agreed to accord the “most favored nation” status to India by replacing a “positive trade list” with a “negative trade list”.

She said the numerous success stories from the Saarc region could be replicated. Reduction of child mortality in Sri Lanka, Maldives leading in universal education, Bangladesh’s initiative of ensuring effective women’s political empowerment and Nepal making important strides in that direction were big achievements that should be adopted, she said

She claimed that Pakistan’s parliament had earned a unique place in history by establishing a pro-active forum aimed at protecting the rights of the under-privileged classes, especially women, children and minorities. She said the current national assembly has passed 77 bills and more than a dozen of these were related to women and children.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 11^th, 2011.