THE controversial Senate election continues to cause ripples across the political landscape.
Over the weekend, Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi added his voice to the criticism of the manner in which the Senate chairman was elected and alleged that vote buying was involved. He went on to suggest that the Senate chairman should be elected by parliamentary consensus because the upper house is a symbol of the federation.
The PML-N is clearly still smarting from the recent Senate-related events: the loss of the party’s control of the provincial government in Balochistan to rebellious PML-N MPAs; the ECP’s decision to invalidate all PML-N tickets in the Senate election and force its candidates to contest as independents; and the ambush in the Senate that brought together unlikely allies to hand the chairmanship of the upper house to an obscure politician.
But the PML-N must shoulder its share of the blame for the current national political uncertainty.
Certainly, once elected, parliamentary norms require the Senate chairman to be non-partisan in his management of the house. Sadiq Sanjrani’s conduct in that regard remains to be seen. But the PML-N already has a custodian of the lower house, Speaker of the National Assembly Ayaz Sadiq. Unhappily, Mr Sadiq’s tenure has been sprinkled with incidents of partisan management of the National Assembly and his sparring with the PTI in particular has occasionally veered into unparliamentary behaviour.
Perhaps, then, the prime minister and the PML-N leadership should begin a parliamentary renewal with the party itself, for example, by urging PML-N MNAs and senators to take parliamentary business more seriously, instead of reaching for solutions that do little to strengthen the democratic project.
What is apparent, however, is that democratic institutions do need urgent strengthening. With only weeks left until the end of the current parliament’s term, realistically there is not much time left for internal change. Perhaps the major political parties ought to consider including in their election manifestos specific proposals for strengthening parliament and ensure that it becomes a hub of democratic activity during the parliamentary term.
No major party is without fault when it comes to infusing parliament with democratic energy. The PPP legislators made a valiant attempt during the last parliament, but the latter was overshadowed by the presidency occupied by PPP supremo Asif Zardari.
Meanwhile, neither Nawaz Sharif nor Imran Khan has evinced much interest in parliamentary business. Change is needed, but the party leaderships will have to demonstrate interest and resolve.
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