Suspending two lawmakers: HRCP hopes SHC will reverse verdict

LAHORE: The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) is concerned at the Sindh High Court’s decision to ‘suspend’ two members of the Sindh Assembly on the grounds that they failed to supervise a campaign to cull stray dogs.

HRCP believes that suspending elected representatives — whose task is to legislate, not execute — amounts to judicial overreach and prayed that the honourable court will reverse this decision.

Indeed, the tendency to overreach has become increasingly common, most recently with the NAB allegations concerning Maryam Nawaz. It is not for the NAB to accuse any citizen of being involved in ‘anti-state propaganda’— at the best of times, a nebulous and convenient label applied to political dissidents, academics, journalists and human rights defenders.

The NAB has been criticised rightly for overstepping its jurisdiction time and again, and for persisting in selective accountability. HRCP believes that the government has as much to answer in this connection. Its assault on the Election Commission of Pakistan betrays a worrying lack of respect for the Constitution and for democratic values.

The government and all state institutions would do well to remember that neither the erosion of autonomy nor unbridled overreach bodes well for Pakistan’s future as a democracy.