A look at the 15th National Assembly

With the 15th National Assembly completing its five-year term, the prospects for timely and free and fair elections to vote in the next National Assembly have darkened.

The National Assembly’s five-year term was due to expire on August 12, 2023 but it was dissolved three days earlier just to push forward the general election by an additional 30 days. It has now become clear that the outgoing federal government has used everything in its arsenal to delay holding of the next general election. It has granted an additional month by dissolving the National Assembly (NA) before time as well as delayed, or hastened, approval of the 2023 census in the Council of Common Interests just days before dissolving the National Assembly to make it incumbent upon the Election Commission to delimit constituencies after the officially published census.

The performance of the National Assembly elected five years ago in a general election held on July 25, 2018 has left a lot to be desired. The outgoing assembly has not done itself any favour by allowing itself to be used to pass a large number of hastily-presented bills without due scrutiny just in the last fortnight of its five-year term. Though even without that, there were plenty of question marks on its conduct and use by the two governments it created.

The legitimacy of the 15th National Assembly was in doubt right from its inception as the fairness of the 11th general election was largely questioned. PILDAT as well as international observers including the Commonwealth Had assessed both the pre-election and post-election phases to be unfair. Though the polling day operations were found satisfactory, the counting of votes, compilation and transmission of results through the Result Transmission System (RTS) were assessed to be severely weak.

Seven major political parties rejected the results of General Election 2018 though after some time leading opposition parties decided to join the 15th National Assembly and form a joint opposition. Mr Imran Khan’s PTI emerged as a victorious party though shy of the required majority and had to form a coalition government with its allied parties.

The unfairness of the general election was such a big issue that within a month of oath-taking and forming of the new federal government, a motion was adopted by the National Assembly on September 18, 2018 to probe rigging in General Election 2018. A 30-member Parliamentary Committee on General Election 2018 was constituted under the speaker of the National Assembly at the time, comprising 10 members from the Senate and 20 members from the National Assembly. Though the parliamentary committee had detailed terms of reference (ToRs) and met initially, its meetings became infrequent leading to the opposition parties to announce a boycott of the committee in June 2019. Thus the National Assembly lost its first and most important way to develop a consensus-based agenda for electoral reforms as had been done by the previous (14th) National Assembly.

When the federal government did present its first major bill on electoral reforms, it was only in October 2020, a little over two years after forming the government despite various public statements by then prime minister Imran Khan. Instead of applying his rhetoric to reform the electoral process in a comprehensive manner, Mr Imran Khan and his cabinet colleagues began a wilful vilification campaign against the ECP after the Senate election and the by-election and re-election in NA 75. Their legislative accomplishments on electoral reforms remained focused on the use of EVMs and facilitation of right to vote by overseas Pakistanis, which were reverted immediately by the coalition government. Another was a presidential ordinance to hold Senate elections through an ‘open and identifiable’ ballot as an extraordinary piece of legislation subject to the Supreme Court’s opinion.

The Election Act, 2017 has lately been amended extensively with some controversial additions like enlarging the scope of caretaker governments while others have included limiting the disqualification of lawmakers to a maximum of five years with retrospective effect, powers to the ECP to fix date for general election and change in spending limit for national and provincial Assemblies’ election, among others.

Consensus, or for that matter, even constructive engagement between both sides of the aisle was not a hallmark of the 15th National Assembly in its five years. The PTI government and its prime minister did not wish to lift their game from acrimonious rhetoric against political rivals to constructive legislative agenda with the opposition.

On many occasions, the prime minister (Mr Imran Khan) sacrificed unified national positioning in the face of serious regional and security crises facing Pakistan and opted to avoid consultation even on statutory appointments. When the time came for him to lead his party as principal opposition in the National Assembly, he chose to quit the assembly and imposed the decision on his party colleagues, violating the very basis of democracy and the sacred trust of representing the citizens. Thus while from August 18, 2018 to April 10, 2022, PTI Chairman Imran Khan as PM had no use for the opposition, the coalition government under Mr Shehbaz Sharif as PM had no opposition to deal with from April 11, 2022 to August 09, 2023.

In the five years from 2018-2023, neither the National Assembly, nor the political parties represented in it, whether in government or in opposition, made any investments in meaningful reforms in the working of the National Assembly and in democracy. Reforms in fact never even appeared on the agenda.

The National Assembly has required critical changes in improving the parliamentary budget process and the agenda has long been defined but each successive assembly and its elected leadership and each political party has ensured that reform is not implemented. As a result, MNAs remain content on rubber-stamping the budget year after year. Standing committees as principal organs of effective oversight on democratic governance remain largely uninterested in major policy and implementation issues that face the country.

From economy to security to inter-institutional relations, this National Assembly, like its previous terms, chose to look away rather than develop and propose required long-term solutions for stability of the country and sustainability of democracy. The 15th National Assembly in fact regressed deliberately by passing laws without required scrutiny and without much regard for the outcome.

Such laws, whether to fulfil international obligations without a home-grown agenda, institutionalizing term extensions or to award draconian powers to state institutions have compounded our governance crises. The 15th National Assembly concurred with the passage of such laws almost without a murmur mostly from as early as January 2020 to the latest legislative spree in indecent haste onwards of July 20, 2023 that have raised serious concerns for stability of democracy and constitutional rights of citizens.

Unlike its sister House, the Senate, the 15th National Assembly chose not to indulge the citizens with presenting its own performance report annually. Beyond the performance statistics that may not tell a story much different than previous assemblies, an unfortunate reality is that the 15th National Assembly endangered instead of strengthened democracy in five years.

The writer is an analyst working in the field of politics, democratic governance, legislative development and rule of law.