In an adversarial environment that Pakistan’s democracy is undergoing in present times, one sees an effusive upsurge of arguments against the democratic system by the conmen of anti-democratic forces. In this backdrop, no other time can more loudly call for the restoration of parliamentary image and remodelling of the system with time-tested parliamentary traditions grounded strongly in inclusive democratic ideals.
While the idiot box keeps bringing us bad news every one hour in raucous news bulletins, the realities on ground get unappreciated and thus neglected. A cursory look at the parliamentary record tells a different story, which is not at all gloomy. Some excellent benchmarks were set after democracy returned to Pakistan in 2008. While some of them are evaporating into thin air, many of them are entering in second stage of their evolution towards a stronger, more transparent and open parliamentary system.
With a rich history of centralized and / or dictatorial regimes, the Executive Branch has had an unchallenged monopoly on the state’s affairs in Pakistan since long. The Legislative Branch with its triangular function of legislation, representation and the oversight of the Executive, has limited itself to a mere debating forum that too, not very robust, with only as much power as is enough to rubber stamp the decisions of the Executive.
The system was so messed up that the Parliamentary Committees, which establish the structured mechanism of oversight on ministries, has been offered to the ministries on a plate by making ministers the Chairs of these committees. This dangerous faux pas was corrected in 2008 alongside taking the committees back from the clutches of the Executive, by giving chairpersonship of the committees to the opposition benches on the proportional representation principle.
For the first time after 1973, around forty percent of the committees of the Parliament, were chaired by the opposition benches. The most important oversight committee, the Public Accounts Committee, was given to the Leader of the Opposition. The Question Hour became more meaningful in the first four years of the mandate, with the regular presence of the Prime Minister who made sure to answer the questions himself. Because of the seriousness that the Prime Minister showed, most of the Cabinet members were obliged to make themselves available for the parliamentary proceedings.
This brought unprecedented life to the business of the House, which reflected itself in the significant participation of all members in legislation and oversight business. The number of ordinances fell down considerably and committees were busier than in any other parliamentary tenure had seen. This promising record, it is encouraging to see, did not diminish with the change of guards in Legislative Houses. Except the Prime Minister’s Question Hour, the rest is continuing with even more enthuse alongside many other initiatives for robust parliamentary reforms.
The Speaker National Assembly has recently taken bold steps to improve human resources within the Assembly Secretariat with necessary sacking and intelligent recruitment wherever needed. Hefty expenditure from public money on staff and administration of the House has been a topic of heated discussion in a Senate Committee during the last session. While the senators are devising mechanisms to make the secretariat support more effective with efficient but cost-effective resources available to them, the National Assembly has started the process of jobs evaluation of their entire staff. Both the Houses have finalized their strategic plans to improve the business of their respective Houses through invigorated and motivated secretarial support, transparent law-making and responsive oversight.
Chairman Senate has recently launched a Senate Think Tank bringing together former and current senators with sector-specific expertise, which is expected to enrich the Research Wing as well as the Legislative Drafting department that the Chairman wants to establish within Senate. The Speaker National Assembly has launched a solar energy generating plant to bring down the assembly’s energy expenses. Apart from being conscious of cost-effectiveness, the National Assembly has been diligently working towards more transparency and greater outreach through the use of IT. Not only are the websites of both the Houses more informative and regularly updated, but the data is being made more user-friendly and informative. In Senate, the proceedings of the Committees are being digitalized for greater access by citizens, while in the National Assembly, the proceedings of the House are being made electronically available instantly on its website.
The first step towards this, is the plan to install automated machines for the submission of questions by the Members. Once they submit their questions through these kiosk-based machines, their input would be collated on the Assembly’s website accessible to everyone who is interested. In a recent conference on e-Parliament by the Inter-Parliamentary Union, Pakistani delegates gave an impressive presentation of Pakistan’s plans which included the provision of digital data of Committee proceedings as well as the business of the House.
In a recently reactivated forum, Speakers Conference, all the provincial assemblies also expressed their interest and resolve to replicate these efforts. Punjab Assembly came up with the proposal of having a Parliamentary Portal linked to the website of federal parliament, that must give all the details of law-making and oversight business being carried out in the assemblies. If achieved, this would revolutionize citizens’ participation in the country’s governance. Not only the almost defunct Speakers Conference, but an equally defunct forum Council of the Chairpersons of Committees has also been reactivated in National Assembly, told Marriyum Aurangzeb, Member of the National Assembly and Speaker’s choice to coordinate and monitor all these initiatives. Ms. Aurangzeb heads the National Task Force on Millenium Development Goals (MDGs) and is currently organizing a National Conference on MDGs, which is expected to bring together all the MDGs’ Task Forces from all the provinces and Gilgit-Baltistan and Azad Jammu & Kashmir.
It would be extremely useful if this initiative of coordinating the oversight of provincial progress on MDGs and to learn from each other’s experiences is replicated in other important areas. Implementation of the 18th Constitutional Amendment and devolution in federalist settings can be another important area to be coordinated in a politically non-partisan manner. National and Provincial Task Forces on Federalism on the lines of MDGs Task Forces and Women’s Parliamentary Caucuses.
The not-so-hollow rhetoric propagated by the media that legislation is meaningless unless there’s no implementation of laws, makes it rather important that all legislation must incorporate the mechanisms of implementation. The model for this is already there in a landmark law that addressed sexual harassment at workplaces, in which the detail implementation procedure was laid out. The same was replicated in the Bill that addressed domestic violence, which stands pending to date in federal parliament. The hostile environment in which our legislative houses are working, demands proactive measures on the part of all houses to make their business relevant to the lives of people. It is important to keep up the reformative spirit not only in federal parliament, but also ti spread it like a vigorous movement in all provincial assemblies. The readiness for the reforms process is unprecedentedly high in the present legislative setup, which must be capitalized on as an opportunity.
The writer is an Islamabad based defender of human rights and works on democratic governance.
Email:marvi@marvisirmed.com
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