EDITORIAL: It is often said in politics that the true measure of a government is what it leaves behind. As such, leaders and members of the 15th National Assembly, which just completed its tenure, would not take much delight in the contents of two reports – both from credible outlets – that have just put the spotlight on its performance.
For some reason Pildat (Pakistan Institute of Legislative Development and Transparency) and Fafen (Free and Fair Election Network) differ in their numbers – regarding pieces of legislation passed, days/hours spent in legislation, etc. – but both have reached similar conclusions: that the way two administrations in the last five years went about running the country did more harm than good to the institution of democracy, among other things.
First PTI (Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf) went on an ordinance spree, promulgating 72 out of 75 ordinances this term (a 97 percent increase over the 14th assembly). And then the PDM (Pakistan Democratic Movement) coalition government bulldozed legislation after legislation through the house; especially in its last few days, mostly without proper consultation on the floor or in select committees.
In their own peculiar ways, both barely met the letter of the law while completely defeating its spirit and neither has any qualms about thrusting their bills upon the legislature. So the process of institutionalising representative government didn’t exactly march forward in the last cycle.
It did, regrettably, regress; which is why it wouldn’t be wrong to say that the 15th National Assembly in fact epitomised everything that is wrong with Pakistani’s politics. From a disputed election result that saw Imran Khan break the status quo as everybody prepared for the ‘hybrid regime’ experiment to paralysed committees because the leader of the house thought it beneath himself to sit with the opposition all the way to the no-confidence novelty and sham legislation; not to mention agitation and bitterness not seen since the country broke apart just 24 years after Partition.
All this time parliament was hardly the picture of efficiency. Even when Imran Khan had everything going his way in the rarest convergence of establishment-executive interests, duly noted by Pildat, the government still had to get the military’s intelligence agencies to make phone calls for important legislation, even budgets.
And you can bet, given the convincing data, that PDM felt sure nobody, really nobody, would object to all those bills passed at the 11th hour, insulting everything that has anything that has to do with this country’s fight for democracy.
Both reports were data-driven, so it’s understandable that they left out the qualitative part about the ordinary people of this country paying for all such blunders of our political elite that grace thick performance reports and endless headlines.
A country of 240-250 million, most of them poor, does not really have the luxury of entertaining self-serving amateurs as democracy’s flag bearers. Yet, come election time, they’ll have to choose from the same leaders that data analytics exposes, beyond much doubt, as simply not up to the task.
Perhaps such reports would achieve their aims if they provided any food for thought to the politicians they cover. But since we’ve seen them come and go many times, with the performance of the assembly never getting much better, that’s an unlikely outcome as well.
The best they can do, at the end of the day, is make ordinary people wiser about who they vote into power and what to expect once they entrench themselves in the house.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2023
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