Parliament alone can decide govt’s fate: Kaira

Says courts have no business deciding which government was a success or a failure.

Information Minister Qamar Zaman Kaira on Friday said that the courts cannot decide which government was successful and which was not.

He said the court can decide which act of the government was in line with or against the law, but it was the sole prerogative of the parliament to decide the status of a government and not of the courts.

“I believe that only the assemblies can decide the future of political governments,” Kaira said in an interview to the BBC  Urdu Service on Friday.

Courts cannot give decision on political process. To decide who is to become the prime minister or chief minister is a right that solely belongs to the parliament, he said. There is no other forum, he emphasised.

To a question why the parliament was unable to resole the Balochistan issue, he said the issue was very complicated.

According to him, if all powers converge in the hand of one person and a province loses rights to its resources, and its political and fiscal powers are usurped, bitterness is bound to arise.

The information minister said that Balochistan is angry with the entre for the treatment meted out in past and then some people even fanned hatred among the centre and the province, there are some vested interests involved, foreign agencies and some really angry people.

He said the current government has allocated Rs10 billion for the uplift of Balochistan that has helped reduce grievances.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 3^rd, 2012.