Daily Times

ISLAMABAD: Senate Chairman Raza Rabbani on Tuesday said parliament has not been given due role on defence, national security, foreign and nuclear policies since from the beginning.

He added that these domains were being strictly controlled by the civil-military bureaucracy thus creating an impression that parliament was incapable and inept to the fast changing national and regional scenario.

The Senate chairman said this while addressing participants of a training programme at Pakistan Institute for Parliamentary Services (PIPS).

He said the future of Pakistan lies in true participatory federalism as envisaged by the Quaid-e-Azam in his speech to the Constituent Assembly.

To various questions, he termed it unfortunate that the concept of welfare state was overwhelmed by the national security or a garrison state and the role of parliament was marginalised by giving an impression that parliament is no more than a debating club and the politicians enjoy privileges. He said that civil- military bureaucracy wants to cling to power and the younger generation was made to believe to remain either apolitical or become worst to the politics.

He said that the curricula of various classes mentioned less about the constitutional history and unfortunately glorified the military dictatorships. The Senate on April 10, 2015 passed a resolution to make efforts for incorporating the constitutional history in the curricula.  “Letters were sent to the provincial Chief Ministers and the Prime Minister but to no avail,” he said.  He added that the Senate took the initiative and an exercise was carried out to review the curriculum and surprisingly all the books had no mention about democracy or constitutional history.

He proposed to PIPS to initiate such programme for the matric level as well to change the thinking of the younger generation towards democracy and democratic system.

He said the Senate has signed MoUs with various universities and has initiated a “Clerks of the Parliament” programme. He said that institutional linkages, like other progressive countries, were developed between parliament and universities to acquaint students with legislative process and senate secretariat also benefited from the fresh commitment and passion of the interns.

He also informed the participants about the intra-institutional dialogue among provinces started by the Senate. The chief justice of Pakistan, for the first time, addressed the Committee of the Whole. He underscored the need for intra- institutional dialogue to rid the country of the quagmire of uncertainty and put the country on the track towards a welfare state.

He said that parliament has been transparent and benefits of democracy need to reach at the grassroots to make people believe that parliament truly reflects the wishes and aspirations of the people.

He hoped that such fruitful interactions and training sessions would go a long way in shaping the country’s future as a true participatory democracy.

Raza Rabbani expressed his well wishes to the participants of the course and appreciated PIPS in this regard.

Earlier, PIPS ED Zafarullah Khan gave a briefing on the purpose of the training on parliamentary studies. He said that faculty from various educational institutes of Pakistan are participating in the training course titled “Training of Trainers”.