Civil-military imbalance a critical political issue: Babar

The civil-military imbalance is a critical political issue that has made Pakistan a security-driven instead of a welfare-oriented state that can be addressed only collectively by the Parliament, the government, the political parties, the media and the civil society.
No government in the past had succeeded in correcting it, nor is likely to succeed in the future without the backing of political parties and the Parliament across the political divide. This was stated by Senator Farhatullah Babar on Wednesday at a symposium on parliamentary oversight of the security sector in Islamabad offering also a set of suggestions on how to do it by invoking the available parliamentary instruments.
He said that it was widely believed that policies in critical areas of foreign relations and national security were made by the security establishment without the oversight by the parliament and the political forces. Indeed the security establishment seemed to have struck with a vengeance whenever the civil-political forces tried to shape foreign policy.
Elaborating, he said that General Zia, using Islam as the facade, dismissed Prime Minister Junejo when the latter tried to take political parties on board on Geneva Accords on Afghanistan. Nawaz Sharif's bold move to normalise relations with India was not only scuttled through Kargil misadventure but the former Prime Minister was also punished with dismissal, a court case seeking death penalty and a decade of exile.
It is widely believed that in her first government Mohtarma Bhutto was not allowed to have a foreign minister of her choice. It demonstrates the refusal of the establishment even to share the foreign policy formulation. During second tenure, according to her account, she refused to acquiesce into misadventures like Kargil and resultantly was hounded and dubbed security risk, he said. He said that when some years ago the Parliament asked for a copy of the law that governed the state security agencies, it was bluntly told in writing to keep its hands off because it was a 'secret and sensitive' issue.
He said that during successive military rules the civil-military imbalance had deteriorated from bad to worse through such instruments as National Security Council and numerous Ordinances that specifically altered the balance and were got indemnified from the Parliament at the time of lifting the military rule. In this connection he referred to the successive DHA ordinances and the National Command Authority Ordinance.
Farhatullah Babar said that the discussion in the joint sitting of Parliament starting from Monday on the guidelines proposed by the Parliamentary Committee on National Security on Pak-US relations was the first major step in the direction of parliamentary oversight of the security and foreign policy. He said that the issue of imbalance had also been addressed both in the PPP manifesto and the Charter of Democracy signed between Mian Nazwaz Sharif and Shaheed Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto in May 2006.
He said that some achievements had been made but much more needed to be done. The Defence Budget had been placed before the Parliament for the first time. It was now for the MPs to make use of the opportunity and use it as an instrument of oversight. The Nuclear Command and Control Authority had been transferred to the Parliament as required under the CoD, he said.
Disallowing parliamentary instruments without offering cogent reasons in writing compromised the oversight power of the Parliament, he said. He said that the MPs should work for rooting the legal and organisational foundations of state agencies in legislation rather than executive order. These are doable things and will take parliamentary oversight and democratic accountability of the security sector to a new level, he said.-PR