LAHORE, Aug 5: No political party has conducted intra-party polls fairly and according to the spirit of the rules enacted by the government and the law ministry plans to take up the issue with the federal government and the chief election commissioner.

Punjab Law Minister Rana Ijaz Ahmad Khan said on Monday while speaking at a a seminar on “Weakness of democratic institutions in Pakistan.”

The minister revealed that he planned to recommend to the federal government to appoint a high court judge and conduct an inquiry into party polls. The government might take all these grievances to the chief election commissioner and get the matter properly investigated. The CEC must reject the papers of those found violating the rules and no one should have complaints about it, he said.

Politics in Pakistan had been restricted to few families that had hurt the whole electoral and democratic process. All of them had failed to deliver properly. No party was ready to give a ticket to an individual except on financial and narrow political considerations. This, the minister said, was pathetic.

Both the so-called popular prime ministers had destroyed democratic institutions in the country, be it parliament or the Supreme Court. How could democracy or democratic institutions could survive in the country? It was the need of the hour to filter the political process so that only clean people could make to national and provincial assemblies. People must take charge of the events and reject all those corrupt people who had looted the country beyond any limit.

If there was a two-term limit restriction on the office of president or prime minister, why not on party chief’s office. This, he hoped, would help end hereditary politics in the country that had destroyed all democratic semblance in Pakistan.

Leaders with heavy mandate did not take long to turn autocratic and try to become kings. Once their eyes were set on that august title, every institution that could hamper their way was damaged and insulted. He listed the events of the 13th and 14th amendments and the way they were passed within minutes. If this was democracy, we were better without it, he claimed.

The present government, he said, was a real democratic government as it had set the press totally free, there was no political victimisation or witch-hunting. All these ills were the hallmark of the so-called democratic governments of the past, Mr Rana said.

The shortsightedness of the political parties was evident from the fact that none of them had ever prepared itself to play a role in opposition. No party had a shadow cabinet or a research wing that could help it survive through time in opposition.

If democratic institutions had to be powerful enough in the country, politicians must mend their ways. The best way of doing the same would be internal democracy in the parties which would breed a culture of tolerance, which, in turn, could promote democratic behaviour on the national level, he concluded.