The Democracy Assessment Group (DAG), convened by Pakistan Institute of Legislative Development and Transparency (PILDAT), on Thursday cautioned that poor governance and economic disarray in the country were weakening consensus on democracy. To prevent the erosion of the trend, citizens must shoulder the responsibility to strengthen the democratic system. They were required to increase their political activism and constructive engagement with the political process, the group said. Assessing the quality of democracy in Pakistan on the International Day of Democracy, it believed the status of constitutional and institutional arrangements of democracy was better than the previous years. The group also saw little evidence of a political will required to arrest the slide.
Despite the promise of an independent accountability commission in the prime minister’s first speech in March 2008, the inability of the government and the Parliament to pass a comprehensive accountability law in three and a half years was the greatest failure, the DAG said.