Traditionally we do not believe in self and national accountability. We keep playing loose balls allowing our issues to deteriorate, that’s why we now have a bad economy and a price hike at the cost of the life of a common man. The common man is getting unruly and is taking the law in his own hands, whereas the ruling elite in Pakistan is paralysed since forever.
Some heads from the government must roll; who have not been able to protect the life and property of the innocent. Our system is being run by a faulty system which actually looks like ad-hoc arrangements to manage day to day affairs and there is no inbuilt system to have security for the government or it’s public.
There is no check on the role of law and the most violated legislation is the rule of law which is not followed by almost all segments of society. The sense of insecurity is one of the major reasons that we are left behind many nations.
The political system always has faced removals in the dark night. It is sad to note that in Pakistan, not a single prime minister has been able to complete his tenure since the country’s inception 70 years ago. History has been repeating itself time and again.
Here are the details of some PMs who were forced out of office.
Pakistan’s first prime minister Liaqat Ali Khan was murdered in Rawalpindi on October 16, 1951 while the second PM Khawaja Nazimuddin was sent home by Governor General Ghulam Muhammad on April 17, 1953. Nazimuddin sought justice from the Supreme Court when justice Munir came up with the doctrine of necessity to validate Ghulam Muhammad’s illegal act. Muhammad Ali Bogra too was dismissed by Ghulam Muhammad in 1954 but later was again appointed as PM. Governor General Iskender Mirza dismissed his government in 1955 as he did not enjoy a majority in the Constituent Assembly.
Zulfikar Ali Bhutto rose to power as President after 13 years of martial law under a special arrangement till the 1973 Constitution was passed. He resigned as president after the constitution was passed, to become the Prime Minister of Pakistan. He went into elections in 1977 and became the first democratically elected PM, but he was too deposed the same year through a military coup by General Muhammad Ziaul Haq in July 1977.
Benazir Bhutto came into power as PM as a result of the 1988 general elections. President Ghulam Ishaq Khan used his presidential powers under article 58 2(b) and overthrew Bibi’s government on August 6, 1990.
Then Mian Nawaz Sharif became PM for the first time in 1990—soon his government too was dismissed by President Ghulam Ishaq Khan in 1993. But it was restored later upon his appeal to the Supreme Court. However, this brought in an open political confrontation between the President and the PM; the famous Kakar formula came into play when the then Army Chief Waheed Kakar appointed a caretaker government by intervening out of “doctrine of necessity” for the sake of national security. He forced both Mian Nawaz Sharif and Ghulam Ishaq Khan to resign on July 18, 1993.
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After winning 1993 general elections overseen by the caretaker Government, Ms Benazir Bhutto became PM of Pakistan again in 1993 but her second government also could not survive more than the last three years. Her own hand picked, ‘loyal’ president Farooq Laghari conspired against her and dismissed her government in November 1996.
As a result of the February 1997 election, Mian Nawaz Sharif again became the PM of Pakistan but on October 12, 1999, General Pervez Musharraf led a military coup and imposed emergency in the country and toppled Nawaz Sharif’s government.
After the unfortunate death and murder of Benazir Bhutto, PPP succeeded to secure a majority in the National Assembly during the 2008 general elections and Yusuf Raza Gilani was elected the PM. Everything was going well until he was convicted in a contempt of court case in the Supreme Court for not writing a letter against the sitting president Asif Ali Zardari to the Swiss authorities to reopen corruption cases.
Mian Nawaz Sharif became the PM for the third time in 2013 but as he entered the last year of his tenure, he got engulfed in the Panama corruption scandal, hence SC dismissed his government.
This saga of the above leaders’ fall from grace shows how fragile democracy is in this country and it looks like there is some major default in our system which we have not been able to rectify. We left the system floating without fixing it properly which should manage the country fault-free, where rule of law has respect and power to sustain the internal and external pressures.
We need to look into the present system critically with the view to give to the country by giving it a system which can make Pakistan a prosperous and a modern country, better than even Turkey and China. Successive interruptions and individual-based constitutional amendments have made our system fragile and weak therefore, we need to make it stronger to cater our growing constitutional, administrative and economic needs.
The nation needs to get out of adhoc-ism, ethnicity and religious extremism, otherwise we will become hostages in the hands of a few extremists. The federal government needs to wake up and use the power of state laws.
https://nation.com.pk/14-Apr-2021/no-accountability-and-hungry-masses
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