EDITORIAL: The Senate session on January 12, 2021 witnessed a heated debate between the two sides of the aisle on the propensity of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf (PTI) government to rely for legislation on presidential Ordinances while bypassing parliament. The opposition argued that this trend indicated that the government wanted to take the country towards a presidential system. They specifically opposed the Pakistan Island Development Authority Ordinance (PIDAO), warning that any attempt to grab the assets of the smaller provinces would be forcefully opposed by the people. Parliamentary leader of the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) in the Senate Sherry Rehman said Pakistan needs to be run by parliament but this government seems bent on ignoring it. She claimed this government had set a record of passing around 40 Ordinances and 38 Bills. She had a very pertinent point to make when she asked why the treasury benches were defending Ordinances like the PIDAO that had expired. To Sherry Rehman, the government’s “non-serious” attitude towards parliament was shocking. She asked and then herself supplied the answer to her question how many times the prime minister had attended a Senate session: hardly once. PPP’s Senator Raza Rabbani weighed in with the alarming statement that parliament is dead because the government neither addresses public interest issues in parliament nor is ready to take either house into confidence. From the government side, Senator Waleed Iqbal attempted to puncture the opposition’s case by quoting figures from the past showing the late Benazir Bhutto promulgated 357 Ordinances in three years in her second term while today’s ‘conscientious objector’ Senator Raza Rabbani was law minister. He went on to assert that 26 Ordinances per year on average had been promulgated during the divided 10-year rule of the PPP and Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz. On the other hand, he continued, the PTI government had promulgated less than 20 Ordinances per year in less than three years of its five-year ongoing tenure. Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs Ali Mohammad Khan objected to the opposition’s use of the words ‘subversion and usurpation’ of parliamentary rights and posed the rhetorical question why, if the opposition considered it subversion, they did not remove Article 89 of the Constitution that empowers the president to issue Ordinances. He failed, however, to elucidate the conditions embedded in Article 89 for resort to Ordinances: when parliament is not in session (breached with monotonous regularity by this government) and there is a dire need or emergency that cannot wait for the normal legislative process. While Senator Raza Rabbani disputed the figure of 357 Ordinances promulgated by the late Benazir Bhutto, this failed to get to the heart of the issue.
The fact is that the opposition, judging from the track record, is in this matter a case of the pot calling the kettle black. Without getting bogged down in the exchanges about the actual number of Ordinances promulgated by either side, it has to be admitted in all honesty that no one’s record in this regard is a clean slate. Governments, past and present, have seen Ordinances as a convenient and easy way to avoid the comparatively lengthy process of normal legislation through parliament. However, the whole case for such Ordinances falls flat when it is considered that Ordinances normally have a limited shelf life (a minimum of four months in most cases) and their lapsing requires either a re-promulgation (raising more problems and conflict) or returning to the legislative process per se. Second, what Ordinances, deliberately or inadvertently, do is obviate parliamentary debate and discussion, in which the thrust and parry by both sides may help to inform or round out the government’s own understanding of the issues. After all, no one should claim infallibility. Last but not least, Ordinances emasculate the role and importance of parliament, which is a serious blow to the desire for a democratic order. The PTI government’s insecurity regarding its razor-thin majority in the National Assembly and its minority in the Senate may be feeding into its current practices. But Law Minister Farrogh Naseem’s argument that these difficulties impose the need to call a joint session of parliament for each Bill does not make sense. The fact is that a joint session in principle is nothing to object to. Second, even a resort to one may not help the government, given its precarious standing in both houses. The irreducible need appears to be a consensus on either doing away with Article 89 or amending it to provide safeguards against its wholesale use without necessary justification. But that too appears beyond the present dispensation, given the government’s inability to reach out to the opposition.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2021
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