AT PENPOINT
One of the most serious things that can happen to a government in a parliamentary system happened, but no one is paying it any attention. That indicates that the government is not aware of the system under which it operates, despite Prime Minister Imran Khan’s claims of knowing the West better than anyone else. It is not as if the government was blithely unaware of the disaster. Though it was not the reason given, the almost immediate postponement of a scheduled joint session showed that it was aware that there was a danger that the purpose of the joint session, legislation, was not a certainty.
However, there has been no penalisation of the whips. Instead of a powerful, indeed disliked, group of enforcers, who make sure that the members of a House do as they are told, the whips seem to enjoy nothing but an empty title. The PTI Chief Whip, Amir Dogar, only shot into prominence when his comments about the DG ISI’s appointment showed that there was a crisis. During the recent episode of the Treasury’s double defeat in the National Assembly during Private Members’ Day, he was not mentioned.
If the government had decided to remove its whip for those votes, which would leave the members to vote according to their consciences, Mr Dogar would have been off the hook, but as that excuse was not proffered, and the governments seems to get away with it by its silence, there have been no calls for his head.
The whole point of a parliamentary system is that the party put in charge of the legislature is also supposed to form the executive. While it is a constitutional obligation here, it is not the case in the UK. There, where the principle developed, it was seen as a convenience, and it avoids the situation seen in the USA, where the executive is headed by a President from one party, and the other party has a majority in the legislature.
The government achieved a double success. Not only did it get the legislation it wanted, but it revived the ‘same-page’ image it has always cultivated, and it has put paid to the talk of ‘establishment neutrality’ that arose after the DG ISI’s appointment to-do
Obviously, though the separation of the three branches of government is desirable, it does not apply dully. The separation of the judiciary and the executive has been more closely pursued, not just in the Constitution. The appointment of sitting superior court judges as federal Law Secretary has been seen with disfavour, as has the appointment of members of the lower judiciary as returning officers in various constituencies.
The problem seems to be that the PTI does not understand that the Legislative power is separate from the Executive, and that by winning the 2018 election, it obtained both, but they remained separate. The reason is practical, and is in fact the reason for the demand for separation of powers. The Executive has to interpret the law and enforce it. If it is allowed to make the laws it enforces, and if it is allowed to interpret what the law means and how it applies to an individual case, the result will be a kind of lawlessness, with the executive power bound by nothing, and free to make up the rules as it goes along.
For this reason, the executive power is entrusted only to a party which demonstrates the ability to legislate. Ability actually means a monopoly over legislation. If the Opposition can pass laws, what is the point of giving the government the executive power? That is why governments take even private members’ legislation so seriously. A government is not supposed to be defeated; and if it is, it would indicate some very poor whipping.
The possibility has been raised that allies are no longer willing to vote with the ruling party, and that led to the postponement of the joint session. The reason being mentioned is that those parties have been told by certain quarters that they did not have to support it. That would be the government’s fault, for its dependence on the allies should not have been in someone else’s hands. The defeat in the National Assembly was 104-107. Imran Khan had obtained 176 votes to become PM, which was narrow enough, as it meant only four votes more than the 172 needed in the House of 342. The defeat meant that no less than 72 votes had melted away, including at least 42 of the 149 PTI MNAs who had not voted with the government. True, they had not voted with the Opposition, which had improved from the 86 its candidate had got in the PM’s election, mainly because the PML(N) and PPP voted together.
The last major test after the Senate elections in March had seen the Treasury candidate for Chairman got 56 votes for Deputy Chairman. The Chairman candidate got 48 votes, winning only because of spoiled ballots. In a joint session of 442, 222 is a majority. Going into it with a peak of 224, and a recent low of 155, means that the Treasury majority in the National Assembly does not counterbalance the Opposition’s majority in the Senate. One calculation shows the government having a majority of two. That is very thin, and with the government relying on the votes of the Senators who spoiled their ballots in the Chairmanship Election, it is skating on very thin ice indeed.
That meant the government may not have been able to pass the laws it had done in the National Assembly, which related to changes to the NAB Ordinance and to the introduction of electronic voting machines (EVMs). It did so, but after pressure was exerted from non-parliamentary quarters. The government whips did not seem to play much of a role in the process, and the passage was by a voice vote, but again the margin was too low to be comfortable.
It was interesting that neither side called for a division, which is the next step when one side feels the Chair has miscalled the voice vote. A division means that votes are recorded.
The Treasury has got its legislation through, but at a price. The Treasury, it seems, cannot legislate without help. That is not a good position to be in. The government has been subjected to opposition barbs about being controlled from elsewhere. These votes are unlikely to cause any reduction in pressure.
The passage of the laws for internet voting and electronic voting machines do not solve the problem, merely create new ones. The biggest issue is the implementing organization, the Election Commission of Pakistan. It suddenly has got a vast amount on its plate, and not enough time to do it in, and probably not enough capacity. There are local body elections to be conducted in all provinces. Then there are to be fresh delimitations to be carried out according to a census yet to be held. There is supposed to be an updating of the electoral rolls, now to include overseas Pakistanis. And the EVMS have to be acquired and introduced, even as the ECP officials themselves are not convinced of their ability to maintain secrecy.
It is almost as if the government was arranging to ensure that the next election could be fixed without the more obvious methods of rigging, allowing winners to be selected. The original declared purpose, preventing those allegations of rigging, seems to have been abandoned. There was a nod towards this by the postponement of the joint session, but no attempt seems to have been made to achieve consensus, and the purpose seems merely to have been to ensure a government majority.
The government achieved a double success. Not only did it get the legislation it wanted, but it revived the ‘same-page’ image it has always cultivated, and it has put paid to the talk of ‘establishment neutrality’ that arose after the DG ISI’s appointment to-do.
