Report on National Assembly

Thanks to the UNDP funding we know a little more about the leviathan called the National Assembly of Pakistan and what it did during the first four years of its term.
Indeed, this assembly is going to achieve the rare distinction of completing its five-year tenure, not because it has become the symbol of national will, but only because it must live on till it would have re-elected President Pervez Musharraf.
During these four years, it was continuously afflicted with the problem of having quorum, and never met on the third day beyond its mandated 130-day annual work. And, these working days invariably included weekends, which were fully paid from the annual budget exceeding a billion rupees.
The output was less than one enactment a month, and as it was nearing its fourth year last November more than 80 government Bills were pending with committees which would meet often but do nothing, sometimes their work impeded because the senior bureaucrats would not like to present themselves before them.
Worst was the lot of the private members' Bills: the National Assembly passed only one such Bill in the four years, although every weekly private members' day had attempted to tackle the 100-plus items on the agenda.
With the UNDP funding, we have this time a glossy, soft to touch report instead of the one issued each year by the National Assembly secretariat. Launching the report the other day Speaker of the National Assembly Chaudhry Amir Hussain appeared happy over this "optimistic" document and with tongue in cheek described the four-year period as "peaceful", where the opposition "helped the Assembly to take roots".
IPU secretary general Anders Johnson, who had come all the way to attend the report launching ceremony, which was taking place eight months behind schedule, was happy that the UN money was well spent as the report vindicated the world body's strategy by reflecting the "voice of general public".
But for the enchantment that distance lends to things, the IPU would have made a different statement, conceding the fact that the present National Assembly willingly acted as the military government's effective instrument of coercion.
Its entire life was devoted to a one-point agenda and that was to eternalise the present political edifice in the country. It committed the cardinal sin of passing the 17th Amendment which not only legitimised the overthrow of an elected government but subverted the Constitution by virtually replacing parliamentary system by a semi-presidential form of government.
The present National Assembly not only wasted time, squandered public money and legitimised the military take-over it also played jokes with democracy. From day one Speaker Amir Hussain abdicated his responsibility as a neutral referee and spared no trick in the deck to cripple the opposition's role in a parliamentary democracy by heavily tilting in favour of the treasury.
Whenever the chips were down for the government, he went out of the way to bail it out, if needed by bending rules, and in the process twice faced moves for a no-confidence vote. While he kept sitting on references moved by the opposition against turncoats, Amir Hussain did not hesitate in dispatching post-haste the reference against Imran Khan to the Chief Election Commissioner.
While his predecessors could order production of detained opposition members, he did not even think of it in case of Makhdoom Javaid Hashmi. As he acted partially the opposition refused to recognise him as independent and made functioning of the National Assembly so difficult that the President has not been able to deliver his annual address on the floor of the house for the last three years.
The claim that because of political stability in the country the present assemblies are going to complete their tenures rings hollow. These are being retained to ensure continuity of the political construct that exists today with President Musharraf, to use his own words, as the "centre of gravity". As for law-making the government has an ordinance-making factory, which works quite efficiently.
In fact, the very functioning of the assemblies has been undemocratic, because they do not concede to the opposition its right to enrich the national debate by offering alternatives and other options. The opposition members are treated by the government as people from another planet.
Democracy is a two-wheel chariot. Its role was defined as far back as the time American constitution was scripted. Intellectual president Thomas Jefferson's observation remains valid for all functioning democracies: "Though the will of the majority in all cases must prevail; that will, to be rightful, must be reasonable; that the minority possesses equal rights, which equal laws must protect, and to violate which would be oppression".