- Respect deserving of the House
By summoning today’s national assembly session President Mamnoon also green-lighted the beginning of the new electoral cycle. As the new House takes its first baby steps, elected members will take oath and names for speaker and deputy speaker will be tabled. There will be a few more sessions of formalities and then the real work will begin. Yet, considering Pakistan’s particular democratic and political culture, the House has had a tendency to be more symbol than substance. For all the sacrifices our politicians have rendered in the service of democracy – something they like to remind everybody, all the time – no elected government has yet given the House the respect it deserves.
In the recent Nawaz Sharif days, the prime minister’s presence in the national assembly would make for immediate breaking news on prime time television; his visits being so few and far between. And Imran Khan too, who claims more democracy in his party, was hardly ever interested in the proceedings of the assembly when he was in opposition. Hopefully this culture will now change. If PTI’s Naya Pakistan is to be built on democratic foundations, then the House must become the nerve centre of mainstream political activity.
Going forward, both the government and opposition have an element of inexperience about them. PTI, having never run the country, will be tested for obvious reasons. And even though PML-N and PPP are hardly new to the opposition benches, they haven’t yet sat on them together in a proper democratic setting; that too in the face of such a fresh wave. The tendency to drag crucial political matters out onto the streets, or into courts, must now stop. Those with big smiles now ready to grace the House must remember the tall promises that got them there. All eyes will, naturally, be on parliament as yet another administration prepares to serve the people.
