ISLAMABAD - A constitutional writ petition was filed before the Supreme Court of Pakistan Thursday urging the apex court to direct Prime Minister to hold referendum whether people for their welfare want Presidential form of government or not.
Chairman Hum Awam Pakistan Tahir Aziz Khan filed the petition under Article 184(3) of Constitution and cited President, Prime Minister, Chief Secretaries of all the four provinces and Gilgit-Baltistan and Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) as respondents.
In the petition, he adopted that referendum had been mentioned in Article 48(6) of the Constitution of Pakistan.
The petitioner stated that as of March 2020, public debt of Pakistan was about $256 billion, which constituted 98.2% of GDP, and external debt of Pakistan was around $112 billion. The petition further said that Pakistan owed $ 5.765 billion to International Monetary Fund (IMF) with 25% of Pakistan’s population living below poverty line. The petition maintained that at present, the average HDI (Human Development Index) and GDP of Pakistan was the lowest as compared to other South Asian countries like India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal and Bhutan.
The petition concluded that these facts showed that the Parliamentary system of governance had utterly failed in Pakistan. The petitioner argued that due to present system there was little legislation in the assemblies and the meetings of legislatures often failed due to shortage of quorum. He said that the monitoring role of the opposition was therefore often compromised.
