Surrender of sovereignty and burial of conscience

The single largest disservice of the PDM coalition government was the shameless conduct of its legislators who surrendered their claim to the supremacy of parliament. By pushing for and consenting to nearly five dozen bills — relating to amendments in the Official Secrets Act and Army Act and giving more powers to the caretakers — they descended to new levels of ignominy and turned the business of legislation into a farce. The PDM legislators — driven by their vested interests as well as their over-zeal to administratively marginalise their common enemy, the PTI — willfully accepted a subservient role in the state business causing curtailment of the civilian authority.

All those members present in the parliament abdicated their sovereignty as elected public representative by abetting to nearly five dozen pieces of legislation through National Assembly and Senate — mostly without prior notice and with no substantial debate. Most of those who spare no opportunity to pretend as unflinching defenders of civilian democratic rights came across as political pygmies given only to self-preservation.

Only few stood tall, including Senators Mushtaq Khan, Tahir Bezinjo and Raza Rabbani.

Mushtaq Khan kept screaming, poking holes into the draft bills but to little avail. He said the bills had rendered the parliament redundant. Rabbani’s conscience also woke up with a scathing speech that he ended with tearing the draft bill into pieces. “I came for legislation not to act as a courtier,” he said.

Senator Tahir Bezinjo said the government was “setting a very dangerous precedent” and called it “a black chapter in the history of Pakistan”.

No surprise that the largely surreptitious legislation drew strong reactions from Pakistan Bar Council and Supreme Court Bar Association. Both said the amended legislation will give extraordinary powers to intelligence agencies, as it defines an “enemy” broadly as “any person directly or indirectly intentionally or unintentionally working for or engaged with the foreign power, foreign agent, non-state actor, organisation [or] a group guilty of a particular act tending to show a purpose that is prejudicial to the safety and interest of Pakistan”.

They called for withdrawal of the amendments saying they are in violation of Articles 4, 8, 9, 10, 10-A and 14 of the Constitution.

“The legal fraternity [has] always struggled for supremacy of the Constitution and rule of law in the country and any such move will be opposed by tooth and nail,” a PBC statement said.

By giving a go-ahead to the dozens of legislation pieces, our legislatures — in the name of national development, security and economic interests — only reversed the rights that had been achieved through a hardly contested democratic struggle since the execution of Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in April 1979. Fruits of nearly 44 years were compromised out of sheer conformism and self-preservation. This literally amounts to a tragic regression — enabled by those responsible for upholding and protecting what the society has achieved in last four decades or so.

A pressing point in Bilawal Zardari’s farewell speech in National Assembly explains the regression: “the status quo remains strong and we failed in putting institutions in their place.”

But the pampered, though otherwise eloquent, Bilawal clearly glossed over the reality — it was him, his father and the PPP that happily jumped on to the bandwagon for a journey that has only reinforced the already omnipresent status quo instead of weakening it. Even stranger was his desire that his father, Asif Ali Zardari, and Nawaz Sharif should take decisions that may make politics “easier for me and Maryam Nawaz”. Vow! Isn’t it a self-serving argument to underscore — we are born to rule and hence need to be facilitated?

No point in wailing and bemoaning dear. You squandered an opportunity by becoming a facilitator for the reinforcement of the status quo.

The next one will come by hard and — as of now — isn’t in sight.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 13^th, 2023.

Like Opinion & Editorial on Facebook, follow @ETOpEd on Twitter to receive all updates on all our daily pieces.