PARLIAMENT has recently been debating the future of Pakistani democracy, but those debates will be for naught unless our leaders also develop the capacity to acknowledge each other’s positions. The past two days have seen the government and opposition benches trading blame for democracy’s present, rather sorry state. On Wednesday, JUI-F chief Maulana Fazlur Rehman accused the government of misusing the Constitution and resorting to unconstitutional measures. He also said his party was “prepared to die” resisting the government if the latter continued pursuing a policy of confrontation and violence, and proposed a new Charter of Democracy as the way out. Regretting that his efforts to mediate between the government and the PTI had failed because the government had changed course and imposed an emergency and governor’s rule in KP, the maulana said the political leadership had grown too intolerant for parliament to do its job. He was not wrong, though the fault is hardly the government’s alone.
The maulana’s rebuke drew two kinds of response. Minister of Defence Khawaja Asif resorted to personal attacks, insinuating that the JUI-F chief was merely sore at being denied a share of power in KP. PPP Chairman Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari, on the other hand, was more circumspect. Though he, too, laid much of the blame for parliament’s dysfunction on the opposition, he nonetheless urged it to exercise its powers and return to parliamentary committees. “Those who want this House to remain dysfunctional and do not want the people of Pakistan to benefit from it have succeeded,” he told the opposition benches. “You have played a part in helping these people achieve their objective.” It was a surprisingly candid admission that the House’s dysfunction serves interests other than the people’s, even if the PPP chief left out his own party’s role in getting us here.
They may have yet to come to terms with it, but both ruling and opposition parties have lost credibility and political ground due to their ongoing vendetta. The maulana’s call for a new Charter of Democracy, though welcome, looks difficult to realise when the two sides cannot even agree to sit together in parliamentary committees. The imposition of emergency and governor’s rule in KP was a gross misstep by the federal government, and it has spoiled the chances of a negotiated settlement. But the opposition, too, has gained little from confrontation. Unless both sides start to show some flexibility on key matters, make compromises and enter negotiations without preconditions, they risk further deepening this crisis of their own making. If enough lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are willing to admit that matters have gone too far, there may yet be hope for parliament, and for Pakistani democracy. The question is, are they ready to do so?
Published in Dawn, October 30th, 2026
