THE PTI government has issued an ordinance to reappoint the prosecutor general of the National Accountability Bureau thereby setting a unique and unenviable precedent of promulgating person-specific ordinances. According to this ordinance promulgated on Feb 9, Syed Asghar Haider, a former judge of the Lahore High Court who was appointed as the prosecutor general in 2018, has now been reappointed for another three years. The ordinance says the president consulted the chairman NAB in reappointing Mr Haider. The PTI government has been issuing ordinances with alarming regularity in what appears to be a convenient bypassing of the regular legislative process because parliament has almost been made dysfunctional as a result of the acute political tension between the government and the opposition since the last elections. However, by issuing an ordinance solely for one person, by name, is by all measures a new low, and one that should have been avoided.

The basic purpose of ordinances has now been thoroughly compromised to attain partisan objectives. A presidential ordinance is meant to substitute for legislation only if there is an urgent requirement and if parliament is not in session. But, not unlike its predecessors, the PTI government has been taking advantage of this instrument to push through laws that it knows it would not be able to legislate through the National Assembly and the Senate. Such resort to presidential ordinances further weakens parliament and dilutes the efficacy of a public debate that forms the basis of regular legislation in democratic states. By using the presidency as a rubber stamp and a post office, the government is perpetuating a terrible practice which will not stop with future governments looking for shortcuts to legislative ambitions. The PTI government’s person-specific ordinance is even more inadvisable and debases the very spirit of the legislative system. The opposition is fully justified in raising an alarm over this development and crying foul. The government should reconsider its flawed approach towards legislation.

Published in Dawn, February 17th, 2021