Share this story!            

Now the battle is for ‘real’ issues

By Rana Qaisar

ISLAMABAD: The storm raised by the opposition parties with the undeclared support of the government’s coalition partners subsided after the government decided not to take the NRO to parliament for legislation. “It is now a non-issue,” the prime minister declared on Tuesday and the house echoed with victorious bench-thumping by the opposition members. The prime minister has nothing to lose and the main beneficiary too enjoys constitutional immunity as long as he sits on top of everything.

Though late, it was a politically wise move to retreat on the NRO when the clouds of uncertainty had started thickening and the political pundits had also started giving dates for the premature end of the five-year presidential tenure of politically and democratically elected Asif Ali Zardari. But what had stopped him from taking this decision much earlier remains an enigma.

Maybe, he had miscalculated and overestimated the “sincerity” of his coalition partners or maybe it was part of his strategy to fight and resist till the last and retreat to regain strength and live for another day to fight. After all, he is a known fighter and his adversaries also acknowledge this. But be it the issue of judiciary or the NRO, he found himself isolated in the bunkered Presidency with the opposition parties and civil society ganging up against him.

Though the prime minister had said that now it was time to move from the non-issue (the NRO) to the “real issues”, which he also prioritised as the 17th Amendment, Article 58(2b) that continues to hang over the parliament as sword of Damocles, commitment to implement the Charter of Democracy (CoD) and what he rephrased as a balance of power between the Presidency and parliament instead of saying a balance of power between him (the prime minister) and the president. “I have asked the committee to put these issues on a fast track,” he said.

They are certainly real but at the same time thorny issues and again involve the president. He had chosen to become president because of the powers the 17th Amendment had vested in this office and someone might have also whispered in his ear: “Be thou on earth as Jove in the sky.” So he chose not take the role of Zafarullah Jamali. But Yousuf Raza Gilani is a prime minister in a different political situation. His “boss” is not in uniform.

Gilani did not seek a balance of power between the offices of the prime minister and the president. He sought a balance of power between the parliament and the Presidency. Who would oppose the idea of empowering the parliament? Surely, no one would. Understandably, the prime minister draws his strength from the parliament. And all “real issues”, which Gilani alluded to in the National Assembly, directly relate to the president’s powers.

An insider says the opposition, mainly the PML-N, is preparing to take up the constitutional reforms issue in the next meeting of the parliamentary committee expected to be held tomorrow. And the next agenda of the opposition is to campaign for the empowerment of parliament and restoration of parliamentary democracy by stripping the president of the powers he had inherited from his predecessor who had virtually reduced the parliament to a mere rubber-stamp.

While the ‘N’ and ‘Q’ were in league against the NRO just a day before, they had stood steadfast on their stated positions and their years-long acrimony also refused to disappear in the recent political dust. The members of the PPP including the prime minister and the PML-N wore black armbands to mark November 3, as black day but the PML-Q members and their former coalition partner – the MQM – did not join the PPP and the PML-N to “condemn” the acts of the man they had once supported for a five-year joyride.

The PML-N appreciated the government’s decision not to bring the NRO to parliament but at the same time continued harping on the same string – try Musharraf for abrogating the Constitution. Bushra Gohar of the ANP also supported the PML-N’s demand. But they forgot that the parliament, which they want to empower, had refused to do so. The MQM and the JUI-F, which had supported the 17th Amendment, are now part of the PPP-led coalition and Article 6 does not apply only to the person who abrogates the Constitution but it also applies to those who abet.

Ayaz Amir, however, warned the entire political leadership of the country that if it did not show acumen and ratify its mistakes, the clouds of uncertainty would continue hovering over the system, which “cannot continue under the burden of incompetence”. As soon as the PML-N members left for a demonstration outside the Parliament House to observe November 3 as black day, the PML-Q members lauded the “political reforms” their patron-in-chief had introduced.

Though the president on the advice of the prime minister had agreed to retract on the issue of the NRO, some PPP members, certainly by design, criticised the opposition parties for blocking the NRO at the behest of the GHQ and also questioned the role of media in this “campaign”. It is, no doubt, a hard pill to swallow for the “presidential group” but the choice was limited.

Home | National

Share this story!