ISLAMABAD: Senator Farhatullah Babar on Thursday urged Senate chairman to announce in the house ruling on trichotomy of powers reserved by the chair after a comprehensive debate in which their apprehension was expressed over the power balance shifting away from the elected parliament.
“Power is continuously shifting away from the civilian structures of the state as invisible forces are relentlessly busy re-writing the political and parliamentary narrative and it is critical that an appropriate ruling is announced to put these elements on notice ahead of the forthcoming Senate elections,” he said while speaking on an issue of public importance.
Farhatullah stated that the continuing shrinking of civilian and parliamentary space and its taking over by invisible forces and the civil-military bureaucratic complex was dangerous and must be curbed.
Referring to Senator Mohsin Leghari remarks that sugar barons controlled the political narrative, the senator said that one section stood at the power pyramid’s apex beyond every other group which was also not accountable.
“I do not expect that the chair’s ruling will stop the slide overnight but the expression of the house’s consolidated opinion might help in injecting some sanity all around,” he said.
Chairman Raza Rabbani said that he had almost finalized his ruling on the issue and would announce it soon. Rabbani also invited the senator to his chambers on Friday for a discussion on the issue.
Later talking to the media, Farhatullah said that during the discussion, he had pointed out that the central issue was of systematic and deliberate shifting of power locus from Islamabad to Rawalpindi and worse still the new locus was not accountable.
He said that this phenomenon was summed up by former army chief General Jehangir Karamat while commenting on the Legal Framework Order (LFO) of General Pervez Musharraf. General Karamat publicly admitted that the LFO represented the military’s long-standing desire to re-write the civil-military equation on its own terms.
“Today the state is like a vehicle where the person on the wheel has no control over vital levers like the accelerator, brake, and clutch. Sooner or later, such a vehicle is fated to meet a serious accident,” he warned.
