Expressing concern over the prevailing political situation in the country, several civil society organisations have called on all state institutions and their subsidiaries to function within their defined constitutional parameters to complement and not attempt to undermine each other to detriment public interest.
In a resolution passed unanimously at a meeting held in the PMA House, representatives of civil society organisations including lawyers, doctors, journalists, peasants, women, students and human rights activists decried the blatant attempts to subvert the democratically elected parliament and the constitution through “crises manufactured on frivolous grounds”.
Prominent among the participants at the conference were former adviser to Sindh chief minister Dr Kaiser Bengali, PILER’s Karamat Ali and Dr Aly Ercelan, Anjuman Taraqi-e-Pasand Musanifeen Pakistan’s Rahat Saeed Khan, HRCP’s Uzma Noorani, Syed Shamsuddin and Asad Iqbal Butt, Pakistan Medical Association’s Dr Tipu Sultan, Peoples Worker Union’s Latif Mughal, Urban Resource Centre’s Zahid Farooq, Network for Women Rights’ Saleha Athar, Pakistan Fisherfolk Forum’s Mohammad Ali Shah, Aurat Foundation’s Shireen Aijaz, Bright Educational Society’s Abdul Waheed and Pakistan Workers Confederation’s Noor Muhammad among others.
The civil society activists maintained that the role of elected representatives is to represent their constituents’ interests and arrive at negotiated agreements to differences without pressure from extra-parliamentary sources.
The resolution stated: “We assert that the principle of parliament being the supreme authority in the land is inviolable and it cannot be compromised under any circumstances. We hold that the constitution defines three arms of the state: executive, legislature and judiciary, while all other agencies are subsidiaries of the state.
“The role of the judiciary is to protect the rights of citizens from arbitrary abuse of executive power and act when there is an explicit violation of laws or constitution or human rights and not on itself becoming a prosecutor or a source of arbitrary executive power. It is not only imperative that the judiciary is independent of the executive, but also from individual and institutional biases, and proceeds with a mind free of extra-judicial influences.
“The role of the state’s security agencies is to act under stipulated constitutional provisions under the command of the executive and not to define what is or what is not in the national interest. The threatening tone of the ISPR statement with respect to the democratically elected prime minister is unacceptable.
“We reassert that parliament is the voice of the people and the right to install or remove a government rests solely with the electorate and not with any agency or the courts.
“Governments may be incompetent or corrupt but the sole judge of a government’s performance is the people. Any attempt to subvert the will of the people holds the potential to create conflict and endanger national integrity and must, therefore, be resisted,” the resolution concluded.
Appealing to the people of the country to stand united and firm in support of democracy and resist all attempts, in the name of national security or combating corruption, to subvert democracy, the civil society members said that the Pakistani people have made great many sacrifices for the cause of democracy and they should not let any opaque vested interests trample their rights to have a democratic and elected representative system in the country.
