SENATOR Raza Rabbani`s statement assuring the opposition that there was no “wavering” on the part of the government on repealing the 17th Amendment to the constitution is welcome. The PPP and its ruling coalition partners have long rallied against the infamous amendment and one only hopes that the party will not do an about-face over its commitment as it has done on the judges issue. This amendment amassed many powers of the prime minister and parliament in the office of the president, including a resurrected Article 58-2(b) — a lethal tool originally inserted into the 1973 Constitution by Gen Ziaul Haq in 1985 which empowered the president to send a government packing at his own discretion. The last Nawaz Sharif government did it away after it had been on the statute book for more than a decade. The article, as it stands today, still empowers the president to send the chief executive home and dissolve parliament but binds the president to refer the matter for a final settlement to the Supreme Court within 15 days of his action. The 17th Amendment was drawn up by the former president, Gen Pervez Musharraf, in December 2003 with a view to indemnify all his actions taken as the chief executive and president after he assumed office in the military coup of October 1999. Mr Musharraf was supported in the passage of the amendment by the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal, which leveraged it to get the general to give up his military office by the end of 2004 — a promise on which the general reneged.

The Muttahida Qaumi Movement is the only party which has not made its stance clear on the repeal of the controversial amendment since the February 2008 election. Although as part of the former ruling coalition it had supported the passage of the 17th Amendment, much has changed since then, and it is safe to assume that it will go along with the other ruling coalition partners. As for the opposition in the National Assembly, the PML-N and the PML-Q — the former having opposed the amendment and the latter having supported it — are now in favour of its repeal, ostensibly unconditionally. This should give the government more than the two-thirds majority required to sail through a constitutional amendment aimed at annulling the distortions brought to the 1973 Constitution, which prescribes a fully empowered parliamentary form of government. The time has come to scrap the detours taken to suit the exigencies of the previous regime which tilted the constitution heavily in favour of an indirectly elected president to the detriment of parliament. As promised in its election campaign and reiterated subsequently, the PPP should lead the move to undo the controversial amendment. Needless to say, this should be done without any delay.