ISLAMABAD, April 22: Acting Chairman Senate Jan Muhammad Jamali has called for direct election of the upper house (Senate) and giving it fiscal powers.

He said this while speaking at the first ever joint workshop of Pakistani and Afghan Parliamentarians arranged by the Pakistan Institute of Legislative Development and Transparency (Pildat) here on Monday. Theme of the workshop was “Parliamentary oversight of the executive”.

The acting chairman said that basic job of the parliamentarians was to legislate and stressed that they should be allowed to concentrate on it.

“Let the local bodies do the job of providing electricity, gas, water and sanitation and the parliamentarians should not be dragged into this business”, he remarked.

Journey of parliamentary supremacy, he said, begins with transparency and accountability, adding that the parliament serves as a bridge between the government and the people and urged that the parliamentarians must be trained and fully acquainted with the job they are supposed to perform so that they can keep an eye on the executive branch of the government.

Talking about the role of parliamentary committees, he said they held key to check excesses and scrutinise the performance of various ministries and departments.

Members of Pakistan and Afghan parliaments attending the two-day event shared common struggles in establishing democracies in their respective countries and called for institutionalising the interaction between Pakistani and Afghan parliamentarians at parliament-to-parliament and people-to-people levels.

This would lead to establishment of friendlier relations between the two neighbours, they hoped.

Initiating the workshop, Hamed Gailani, deputy speaker of the Meshrano Jirga, Afghanistan Parliament, expressed his gratitude to the international community for supporting the establishment of democracy in Afghanistan.

He believed that the parliamentary traditions and practices were slowly developing a culture of tolerance in the country and that the people were learning to exercise their rights without resorting to violent means of expression.

Dr Najma Heptulla, presenting a comparative view of the Indian Parliament and its role in carrying out effective oversight of the other organs of the state, said that in order to avoid a conflict of interest on part of the members of the ruling party, Indian parliamentary rules of procedures provide for the chairperson of the Public Accounts Committee of the Indian Lok Sabha to be a member of the Opposition.

She said that the Rajya Sabha or the upper house of the Indian parliament (indirectly elected) is free from the pressures of the constituency and legislation and, therefore, can perform the oversight functions better than the lower house.

Senator Raza Rabbani, leader of the House in the Senate, said that the Constitution had been placed in abeyance and defaced to a great extent with an extreme imbalance existing between the presidency and the parliament.

He said oversight functions of the parliament could not be delivered effectively unless the Constitution gets rid of the restricting sections such as the 58-2(b) and the Schedule 6, which allow for dissolution of the parliament at the whim of one individual and prohibit the parliament from enacting laws without the specific approval of the president.

Senator Rabbani said that government was committed to restoration of democracy and the Constitution in its original form.

Riaz Fatyana, a former member of the Public Accounts Committee, said that the parliamentary committee system in Pakistan remains weak due to a frequent disruption in the democratic process, lack of awareness on part of the citizens and the civil society as well as lack of monitoring by the media.