Parliament on snooze

I have a ritual almost every morning: my alarm goes off at about 8.30am and I put it on snooze, which means that it rings again after every 10 minutes, until at about 10.30am I finally roll out of bed. I both love and hate my alarm clock: it helps me get up and work, but it also prevents me from sleeping. Such, I think, is our relationship with parliament in Pakistan.

Pakistan is officially a parliamentary democracy, which broadly means that parliament is supreme (sovereignty is another question!). Most decisions, therefore, have to be taken in parliament with the prime minster as the ‘leader of the House’. The broad-based mandate of parliament — its full membership represents every constituency in the whole country — gives it the strength to deliberate and decide on issues relating to the country. It is a power representative body and hence its decisions are the most important ones in government. Parliament is indispensable.

That said, in Pakistan it seems that parliament is on perpetual snooze. Everyone knows it is important, every one gives it lip service, but it comes alive only occasionally and then is put on snooze again. However, just like the alarm clock, whenever parliament comes alive it clearly shows how important an organ of the state it is — yet we still ignore it to our peril. Take the example of the dharnas in Islamabad last year. The rumour mill at that time went into overdrive to predicting the government will fall. Some people had already begun preparations for this and it seemed that it was merely a matter of days before the elected government would be sent packing. But then a joint session of parliament was called (kudos to Khurshid Shah here), and even the opposition clearly backed the continuation of the elected government and rejected the derailment of democracy in the country. The unity of purpose shown in parliament must have shocked and, I hope, prevented anyone thinking of taking any drastic action.

The second example is the recent parliamentary resolution on Yemen. It has rightly steered clear of any military involvement in the conflict and reiterated our good relations with all Middle Eastern countries. Even while hype was being created in the country that somehow (and this was a real leap of imagination) the holy cities of Makkah and Medina were under threat from the Houthis (what would Houthis, who are also Muslim, gain from attacking and desecrating Muslim holy places is beyond me), the parliamentary resolution steered the country away from militarily supporting the Saudi attack on Yemen. Here, interestingly, parliament tied the hands of its own leader, the prime minister, who keeping in mind his close relations with the Saudis would not have been averse to such an intervention. Therefore, not only can parliament, when it is not on snooze, play an important part in reining in extra-parliamentary (and extra-constitutional) forces, it can even rein in its own leader. Its positive effects — if allowed to function properly — are many and need to be harnessed.

The real work of parliament in any country is legislation and the mediocre quality of our legislation at times (the Cyber Crime Bill which is due to be presented will be a case in point), is a reflection of the fact that we do not give due credence to this critical organ of government. Our parliamentarians hardly attend its sessions (every day I get an email from the Free and Fair Elections Network team noting the dismal attendance records of our legislators), and even when they do turn up, they are scarcely interested in vetting and revising legislation. We are ignoring this very important aspect of government to our peril, since without the active participation of parliament, a democracy based on it can simply not work.

Just like the alarm clock, we know that parliament is important and its occasional activity exhibits its importance, yet due to our own vested interests we keep putting it on snooze. We need to rectify this imbalance now — while our democratic systems are still developing — or else we will be perpetually sleeping.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 25^th, 2015.

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