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| 03 April 2004 | Saturday | 12 Safar 1425 |
Opposition groups join hands
ISLAMABAD April 2: The opposition parliamentary groups on Friday joined hands against the draft National Security Council bill introduced in the National Assembly
, terming it a means to perpetuate the control of the military on parliament and other democratic institutions.
Two major opposition alliances, the Alliance for Restoration of Democracy (ARD) and the Muttahida Majlis-i -Amal (MMA), which drifted apart after the latter supported the government in getting the 17th amendment bill passed, decided to once again wage a joint struggle against the NSC.
Talking to Dawn after a walkout from the lower house, Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan, acting president of the PML-N and the ARD, said that "with the introduction of this bill the future of democracy in Pakistan had become totally bleak".
He said: "One fails to understand what will be Jamali's position once the NSC bill is passed."
He further said: "It will make the politicians of this democratic country a laughing stock of the world and it will institutionalize a situation in which one man will be calling the shots without the fear of accountability. But when the country's elected chief executive calls the uniformed improperly elected president as his 'boss', there is nothing left to cry for."
Later, speaking at a joint news conference at the parliament house cafeteria after their en bloc walkout, the leaders of the opposition parliamentary groups, along with smaller parties like the PTI and PONM, said they would launch a struggle inside and outside parliament.
Raja Parvez Ashraf, secretary-general of the PPP Parliamentarians, said: "Today was the blackest day in the national history as a serious blow has been dealt to parliamentary democracy by attempting to foist military generals on the elected parliament through the NSC."
He said the ARD since day one had been opposing any constitutional role for the army, and hence the NSC was not acceptable to it in any shape even if it was only an advisory body.
By setting up the NSC, he added, the army wanted to put a "controversial" president as chairman of an unconstitutional body in order to subjugate parliament and parliamentary democracy. "To pass this bill would mean cutting the branch of the tree on which one was sitting."
Imran Khan, chairman of the PTI, said the authors of the idea of the NSC had failed to see that a council set up on similar lines in Turkey had become the biggest impediment in its efforts to enter the European Union and now Ankara had begun a process of reducing its powers.
He asked the ruling Q-League parliamentarians to resist passage of the bill, otherwise they would also lose the authority which the constitution had bestowed upon them.
The MMA acting president and parliamentary leader in the NA, Qazi Hussain Ahmed, said the proposed NSC was being fashioned as a supra-constitutional body to suppress democracy and to subdue the supremacy of parliament.
He said that while negotiating with the government the 17th amendment bill, the MMA had opposed the NSC and had made it clear that it would neither support it nor vote for it.
He said the term crisis management - one of the functions that had been proposed for the NSC - would only strengthen the hands of the COAS to intervene along with the other three services chiefs whenever he wished to.
The MMA leader said the draft NSC bill empowered the council to frame its own rules of business which in effect could include any thing to hinder the smooth running of democracy.
He lamented that by making the president head of the council, instead of the prime minister in his capacity as the chief executive, the office of the prime minister would be made totally and effectively subservient to the president.
Mehmud Khan Achakzai, the chief of the Pukhtunkhwa Milli Awami Party and a senior PONM leader, called upon the rank and file of the political entities to join hands against military interventions and cited joining of hands by military/intelligence agencies as the biggest reason for the continuous political crisis in the country.
He blamed the army for the failure of all past administrations, both civilian and military. He said it was for the politicians to decide among themselves that no army general would ever be given political support to perpetuate his misrule and unconstitutional actions.
Saad Rafiq of the PML-Nawaz said his party had always opposed the idea of a NSC, as a result of which a COAS had lost his job during Nawaz Sharif's stint in power. He termed the introduction of the NSC bill as another big blow to the democratic system after the military take-over of October 12, 1999.
Hafiz Hussain Ahmed, deputy parliamentary leader of the MMA, said the NSC was in violation of the constitution, which would serve as vehicle of turning the system into presidential one as the constitution prescribes parliamentary system.
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