Raza Rabbani demands 'grand dialogue' to create harmony among institutions

Former Senate chairman Mian Raza Rabbani on Monday stressed that grand intra-institutional dialogue should be held to create harmony and let the institutions agree on "not to transgress into each other’s domain".

Highlighting that the public exhibition of contradictions among institutes was casting long shadows on already fragile political system, Rabbani said, “The way forward is a grand intra-institutional dialogue, wherein, each institution agrees not to transgress into each other’s domain, respecting the trichotomy of power envisaged in the Constitution.”

In a press statement, the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) leader said Pakistan was engulfed in multiple crises, one being contradiction within ruling elite. The conflict of the ruling elite emanated from within and it had historical roots, he maintained.

He alleged that Pakistan’s establishment had, in history, been taking support of the judiciary.

“The extreme polarised political atmosphere has affected this equation within the ruling elite. This intra-class contradiction within the elite, is vitiating the functioning of state institutions,” he said.

Rabbani said in a democratic federal parliamentary system, parliament was the final arbiter for intra-elite disputes. Hence, he said, parliament should refrain from becoming a party to the intra-elite disputes. “The Committee of the Whole of the Senate of Pakistan should play its role in healing the situation,” he suggested.

Taking a dig at non-implementation of the Constitution in its true spirit, the politico said the Constitution was being treated as a "nose of wax". “It is molded to legitimise the unconstitutional transgression of one institution into the affairs of the other.”

The PPP leader said all this had created a situation “where rule of law has ceased to exist and there appears to be a rule by law”.

It had shaken the constitutional foundations of the state, created structural and political instability, he said.