5
Ever since its creation, the country has been commuting between a presidential and a parliamentarian form of governments and thus has ended up being neither this nor that. The constitution of 73 declares Pakistan as a republic, where the Prime Minister is the head of the executive, but the constitutional head of the state, is the president. How this nominal post has been manipulated and exploited by our military dictators and even civilian presidents, is not any secret. It’s interesting to note that unlike many other articles of the constitution, a substantial portion of the document is spared to explain in detail about the functions and powers of this office. A president is the head of the state, is ceremonial head and is supreme commander of the Armed forces. He is chosen by members of the parliaments (Senate, National and Provincial assemblies together). He can’t be removed other than through impeachment, which requires two third of the vote in favour of such a move. The president enjoys immunity and therefore can’t be tried for any crimes, while in office. Zia through 17th amendment had made the president the most powerful office with the power to suspend the government and overthrow the sitting governments. This power was misused many times. The constitution speaks about the president to be a neutral person, as he represents the Federation and yet our former president A.A.Zardari openly defied the rule and court orders and mocked the entire system by remaining president and head of PPPP until the end of his office. Zardari and his presidency, is a subject that alone can give us the material to write a book, but we will not waste our time on one single scum like him and yet we need to tell that his coming into power through the back door, was one of the most hideous crimes of the pseudo democracy and the fake elections of 2008, where millions of fake votes were cast and the sitting government represented just the fraction of the population. The verdict of the history, is certainly will be hard and these criminal leaders of the political parties will be disclosed as the worst enemies of the democracy.
In parliamentarian government all the power belongs to the parliament and the PM and his cabinet are accountable to the members of that institution, but our present PM is not answerable to none, he obviously shows his contempt to the parliament by not attending its sessions. Ever since the elections, he has not even set his foot in the upper house and has just attended one or two meetings of the NA. Article 91 speaks about a collective responsibility of the PM and federal ministers towards the parliament and yet we can see that this rule is violated on a daily basis. The cabinet meetings are just to confirm all that which has been already decided by His Highness the Emperor NS. Who in his cabinet and party can dare to question his decisions and his dull intelligence? According to the constitution a minister can be appointed without even being the member of the parliament for six months. Prime Minister can be removed by vote of no confidence alone, after the eighteenth amendment, which took away the right of the president to dissolve the Parliament and sack any sitting PM. It also removed the restriction of a PM to hold the office only for two terms. The removal of that hurdle was vital for both BB and Nawaz, as both had already been in the office twice. The removal of this clause brought the two sinister sides on the same page and made them cover each sides crimes. We will not discuss the rubber stamps, called the Senate and Assemblies or Majlis-e- share here as this requires a separate comprehensive study and we will do it some other time.
There remain many issues to discuss, but we refrain from doing so at present. The conclusions hitherto are discouraging and depressing. We are baffled to note that the subsequent governments of this country have been criminally violating or ignoring the articles of the document, they so often declare as something sacred. The declaration that the constitution is Supreme, is a great lie and we should be careful to buy it at its face value. After discussing the article 6, we would be through for the time being and other holy cows like the Parliament and the Judiciary, we will be handling separately in the days to come.
Continued, one more to go.