ISLAMABAD, Nov 14: A big deficit of dignity marks the demise of a decimated National Assembly right on the due date on Thursday, along with the civilian cabinet of the military-led government, mainly for its role that helped bring about Pakistan’s present turmoil.
The government gloats mainly over this lower house being the first in Pakistan’s 60-year life to complete its five-year term, but critics have a plethora of complaints about what they see as a handmaiden’s role aimed at keeping Gen Pervez Musharraf in the saddle as the country’s fourth military president.
The ruling coalition’s firm majority in the 342-seat house — as also in the 100-seat Senate — easily weathered all parliamentary challenges posed by a big opposition to President Musharraf or the civilian administrations of the three prime ministers he handpicked in five years.
But the dying days of the house proved to be the severest, with one big chunk of the opposition members from parties forming the All Parties Democratic Movement resigning en masse to try to block Gen Musharraf’s election for another five-year term and another of the People’s Party Parliamentarians (PPP) boycotting the Oct 6 vote by a truncated parliamentary electoral college.
The ruling coalition’s loyalty was not dimmed even after the general decided to act without them to proclaim a state of emergency and put the Constitution in “abeyance” through a Provisional Constitution Order (PCO) on Nov 3 in a move in his capacity as the Chief of the Army Staff that meant suspension of fundamental rights, a virtual slaughter of the superior judiciary and the regime’s worst clampdown on the media marked by a blackout of independent domestic and major foreign television news channels.
In a brief session on Nov 7, attended only by the members of the ruling coalition, the National Assembly endorsed the proclamation of emergency and the PCO though its unanimous resolution was only a political ploy without any consequence as the president’s action was extra-constitutional that needed no parliamentary approval.
That was the last session of the assembly, which began its tenure with the swearing in of its members on Nov 16, 2002 and unique noisy anti-Musharraf opposition protests that lasted a whole year — a record in itself.
The beginning of the house was also marked by floor-crossings by opposition members, mainly from the PPP, which were induced by President Musharraf’s decision to keep an anti-defection law in suspension to help the election of his first prime minister, Mir Zafarullah Khan Jamali, by a majority of only one vote.
What critics saw as the most devastating blow to democracy in the National Assembly, as also in the Senate, was the support lent to the government by the second largest opposition group of the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal (MMA) alliance of six Islamic parties to pass the Seventeenth Constitution Amendment that legitimised sweeping powers assumed by the president through Legal Framework Order (LFO), including those to sack a prime minister and dissolve the assembly. The LFO also amended an electoral law that bars both former prime ministers Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif for seeking the same office for a third time though they served only two short-lived terms each.
The MMA supported the passage of 17th Amendment by the end of 2003, which brought an end to opposition shouting and desk-thumping protests, after Gen Musharraf publicly promised to give up his army uniform by Dec 31, 2004, and earned the alliance the favour of its secretary-general Maulana Fazlur Rehman being nominated leader of opposition by Speaker Chaudhry Amir Hussain, although PPP parliamentary leader Makhdoom Amin Fahim commanded the support of a majority of opposition members.
When the general decided to renege on the uniform pledge, blaming the MMA for not joining a confidence vote for him by both houses of parliament and the four provincial assemblies to endorse his “election” as president in a controversial pre-general election 2002 referendum, the ruling coalition passed a controversial law to allow him to keep both the offices of president and army chief until the expiration of his new term on Nov 15, 2007.
That made things much easier for the president and the coalition also went along without a question with his choice of two more prime minister after Mr Jamali was ordered to resign — Pakistan Muslim League president Chaudhry Shujaat for only 45 days before finally settling for former finance minister Shaukat Aziz, whose record big cabinet of about 70 ministers, ministers and state and advisers will make way for a caretaker cabinet to be named to supervise the next elections due by Jan 9.
But the president shied from making a mandatory address to a joint sitting of the National Assembly and the Senate at the start of each parliamentary year except once, to avoid facing opposition protests as he did on the first occasion.
The outgoing National Assembly, all of whose members were required by law to be graduates — though the validity of madressah sanads held by many MMA lawmakers is yet to be finally decided by the Supreme Court — will also be known for frequent suspensions of business for lack of quorum, ministerial absences and often unsatisfactory answers to questions and disregard of questions relating to sensitive security matters.
Its debates were seen by old hands at parliamentary reporting as generally inferior to those of previous assemblies, though some opposition figures like PPP’s Aitzaz Ahsan, Pakhtunkhwa Milli Awami Party’s Mahmud Khan Achakzai and some young members of the ruling Pakistan Muslim League were outstanding.
Chaudhry Amir Hussain proved to be most speaking speaker of any Pakistani National Assembly with his interruptions, and he had to face two unsuccessful opposition no-confidence motions for alleged partiality compared to one each against deputy speaker Sardar Mohammad Yaqub (on the same charge) and Prime Minister Aziz (for alleged wrongdoings such as his role in the scrapped sale of the Pakistan Steel Mills and a stock market crash).
