Pak Constitution amendment kicks up a row

ISLAMABAD, July 5: The 14th amendment to the Pakistan Constitution has become a source of controversy ever since the country's National Ass...

ISLAMABAD, July 5: The 14th amendment to the Pakistan Constitution has become a source of controversy ever since the country’s National Assembly passed it last week.

Under the Amendment, a Member of Parliament can be disqualified if he or she goes against the party on whose platform he or she has been elected. But the law, known as the “anti-defection law,” does not end there.

The new enactment says that a Member of the House shall be deemed to defect if he commits a breach of party discipline or votes against the party’s orders.

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The ultimate decision of whether a defection has occurred lies with the party leader. Observers say that this makes the party leader a veritable dictator since the parties in Pakistan are non-democratic and centre around one person, as in the case of both the ruling and opposition parties, the PML-N of Nawaz Sharif and the PPP of Benazir Bhutto.

“It is the party leader who will decide whether a defection has occurred or not. This means that his powers have been enhanced at the cost of the members,” says one observer.

Historically, Pakistan’s politics has suffered greatly from horse trading. Floor crossing has been a bane of all governments which followed the dictatorial rule of General Zia, in 1988.

The two worst offenders are Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif, who have been sharing the Prime Minister’s seat since then. “Corruption followed close in the heels of democracy as members were bought and sold to secure governments,” says an analyst. This gave democracy a bad name with Pakistanis associating the massive horse trading, or the culture of lotaism (lotas is the term used by Pakistanis for political turn coats) with democracy.

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While in theory, the anti-defection legislation may bring “decency to politics,” as Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif promises, there are still reservations. An editorial in The News, Pakistan’s main English daily, says: “The haste with which it was rushed through parliament may partly be offset by the political consensus behind it. Law in haste is becoming a disturbing pattern which undercuts parliamentary scrutiny and debate so essential to democratic transparency.”

A lot of political analysts say that the public’s right to know has been circumvented in this roller-coaster style of passing bills into law by the Sharif government.

The News argues “bitter experience instructs us that most of our problems lie not in the laws but ourselves.” Ghani Erabic, another political analyst says that the safeguards against horse trading were already available in the Political Parties Act of 1968 but “this law was deemed to have been interpreted to death by the courts paving the way for the ouster of the judiciary by the 14th Amendment.” Now the ousted parliamentarian cannot approach the courts for redress as the party boss has the final say.