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| September 10, 2005 | Saturday | Sha’aban 5, 1426 |
Govt has turned parliament into rubber-stamp: PPP
ISLAMABAD, Sept 9: People’s Party Parliamentarians (PPP) MNA Sherry Rehman has condemned the regime for reducing parliament to a charade by running it for six hours a week and turning it into an “ordnance factory.” In a statement here on Friday, she said it was clear after the “farcical local bodies exercise” that the government was determined to turn even the residual powers of the National Assembly into a rubber-stamp for one-man rule.
Bypassing the Federal Public Service Commission (FPSC) Ordinance, the government has demonstrated that it is no longer able to tolerate any checks and balances on the growing and absolute powers of a military presidency, she said.
Instead of addressing the problems confronting the people of Pakistan, she said, the government was busy dismantling the autonomy of any remaining institutions in the country.
The FPSC is now under a “presidential ordinance axe” whereby its established rules and independence as guaranteed by the law, under the Constitution, are being chopped to maximize the discretionary powers of the president and prime minister.
“By reducing the tenure of its members from five to three years, the government will be able to weed out non-compliant members of the FPSC, thus eliminating any challenges to its single writ, and reducing the autonomy under which the organization is supposed to function in,” she added.
Ms Rehman said the ordinance demonstrated clearly that the government was not willing to tolerate any institutional checks on its arbitrary decision-making on its whims and political goals.
The PPP MNA said the same kind of authoritarianism was evident in the way this government had dismantled its own Police Order 2000 by giving the chief ministers arbitrary powers of transfers and postings. These amendments to the Police Order 2002 make massive cuts in the operational autonomy of the police.
They are clearly aimed at opening the door for further abuse of the police force to pursue the political goals of eliminating the opposition and other possible challenges to this regime, she said.
This growing dependence of the military regime on the use of law-enforcement forces in order to manipulate political outcomes has been painfully evident in the local polls, where over 300 police officials were transferred across the country illegally after the announcement of the poll schedule.
Ms Rehman asked the government to withdraw these draconian ordinances and turn its attention to the growing crisis of price spiral and political stalemate in the country.
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