Rabbani for grand dialogue

ISLAMABAD: Former Senate chairman Raza Rabbani has called for a grand dialogue wherein every institution agrees not to transgress another’s domain, respecting the trichotomy of power envisaged in the Constitution.

“Pakistan is engulfed in multiple crises, one being contradiction within the ruling elite and the conflict of the ruling elite emanates from within, this conflict has historical roots,” he said in a statement on Monday. He said Pakistan’s establishment, to further a political agenda which was not the agenda of the people of Pakistan, has been taking support of the judiciary. The extreme polarized 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 public exhibition of these contradictions was casting long shadows on an already fragile political system. Urging the parliament to take the lead role as final arbiter in the dispute among constitutional institutions, he said that in a democratic federal parliamentary system, the final arbiter was the parliament. Therefore, the parliament should refrain from becoming a party to intra-elite disputes. The Committee of the Whole of the Senate of Pakistan should play its role in healing the situation. The Constitution is being treated as a nose of wax. “It is molded to legitimize the unconstitutional transgression of one institution into the affairs of another,” he said, adding that this created a situation where the rule of law ceased to exist. This has shaken the constitutional foundations of the state and created structural and political instability.