KARACHI: PPP ready to attend talks with government
By Our Reporter
KARACHI, July 24: The People’s Party Parliamentarians has expressed its willingness to attend the government-opposition talks on the Legal Framework Order with “an open mind”, despite contradicting signals from the government side.
“We will attend the proposed meeting on July 27, with an open mind, hoping that the government will also show flexibility and accommodation,” said Mian Raza Rabbani, PPP parliamentary leader in the Senate, on Thursday.
Referring to some media reports of contentious issues pertaining to the government-opposition dialogue, Mr Rabbani emphasised that “multi-dimensional contradictions were involved in the LFO issue and the dialogue itself.”
Asked whether the PPP would sit in the meeting if the Patriots’ group members were included in the government team, he said that when Makhdoom Amin Fahim had met the prime minister, he conveyed to Mr Jamali his party’s reservations on the reported composition of the government side, which was yet to be finalized.
Asked about the reasons for hope and optimism amidst statements that the LFO was part of the Constitution, Mr Rabbani referred to prime minister’s statement that the talks would begin from where the process was suspended.
Explaining his party’s position, Mr Rabbani said the government’s argument that the Supreme Court had conferred the power to amend the Constitution on the chief executive was not valid. The powers given to the chief executive were limited and did not allow amendments to the basic structure of the Constitution, namely federal, parliamentary and democratic.
The government, he said, must realize that the Constitution was the fundamental law of the land and it provided an infrastructure within which the political process, laws, institutions and society operated.
It is a historical fact that whenever constitutions and institutions were tailored for particular individuals, they did not survive their creators. Therefore a constitution should be a consensus document and the LFO is far from that, he said.
“Can the Supreme Court operate outside the ambit defined by the Constitution while law making is the exclusive domain of parliament?” he asked.
He said: “One fails to understand the logic in not taking the LFO before parliament and letting it become an issue.” It had been a requirement of the law that all documents, instruments, laws and amendments be placed before parliament, he said.
He said the LFO was a blueprint to vest one man with sweeping discretionary powers.
PPP PROTEST: The Pakistan People’s Party has planned to take out a procession on Aug 13, from Tower to the Quaid-i-Azam’s mazar, to protest against what it says unconstitutional and anti-people measures of the regime, including the alleged false cases against Ms Benazir Bhutto and her husband Asif Zardari.
According to Sindh PPP General Secretary Rashid Rabbani, the peaceful procession would articulate people’s protest against the rising cost of living, increasing utility tariffs, water and electricity crisis, and the mounting rate of unemployment and crime.
The PPP leadership was of the view that the rally would also be a litmus test of the government’s tolerance.
This procession would be the forerunner of other such rallies across the country to mobilize the party cadre for stepping up pressure on the government to withdraw cases against party chairperson Ms Bhutto.
A general body meeting of the PPP, Karachi chapter, presided over by its President Haji Muzaffar Shujra, worked out a plan for the procession.
