ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi Monday said that the Parliament represented the will of 207 million citizens of the country, adding that state institutions should stick to the limits defined for them in the constitution.
Criticising the ongoing wave of judicial activism while speaking on a point of order in the National Assembly, Abbasi said that confrontation among institutions would not serve the country. “Elected representatives are being referred to as thieves, dacoits and mafia in courts,” he said.
He requested the House to initiate a debate on the contours of the Parliament’s right to legislate and the government’s powers to take decisions based on those legislations. “It is my request to the opposition leader to not make this debate a partisan issue because today we are in government, but tomorrow there will be another party in power,” the premier said.
Commenting on the delay with which the PM had raised the issue, Opposition Leader Syed Khurshid Shah said the opposition had spoken in favour of parliamentary sovereignty from day one.
“It is the government, which kept the issue out of this House, like the Panama Papers issue,” he said, adding that the Parliament was the supreme forum for legislation.
“We have ourselves weakened this parliament,” he said, advising parliamentarians to sit together and think about mistakes committed in the past.
Shah further said, “I agree that legislation is our right and it can only be interpreted not rejected.”
“Parliament legislates for the sake of country and not for the government or the opposition, and legislation should not be made for any specific personality,” he clarified, saying, “If the government will bring a positive legislation into this House, we will support it wholeheartedly.”
Interior Minister Ahsan Iqbal echoed the PM’s concerns, saying that interruptions in the democratic process had been a major reason behind lack of development in the country. “The institutions are trying to intervene in one another’s domains,” he said.
Meanwhile, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) lawmaker Shafqat Mahmood criticised the government for what he said was its undemocratic approach as the PM and Speaker Sardar Ayaz Sadiq left proceedings as soon as he rose to speak on the issue.
He said that the government was attacking the judiciary in the guise of supremacy of Parliament.
When Deputy Speaker Murtaza Javed Abbasi asked him to conclude his speech, Mahmood again got agitated. Soon, PTI lawmakers got up and threatened to stage a walkout, but an intervention by Interior Minister Ahsan Iqbal calmed them down.
Published in Daily Times, February 20th 2018.