Akbar S Babar slams PTI manifesto

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf founding member Akbar S Babar on Monday feared that the PTI manifesto could endanger the federation, if implemented.

“According to the PTI manifesto, the prime minister will be elected by people instead of MNAs. Such a move amounts to changing the parliamentary identity of the Constitution. Such a constitutional amendment is outside the jurisdiction of the Legislative Assembly and can only be done by the Constituent Assembly,” he noted in his reaction to the manifesto the PTI unveiled a day earlier. He pointed out that when the prime minister was elected in a direct election, he would neither be accountable to the National Assembly nor would the majority of the National Assembly be able to remove him from office that was neither the parliamentary nor presidential system, but complete chaos.

“If the prime minister is elected by the majority vote of people, the feeling of deprivation will be strengthened in the small provinces that the prime minister of Pakistan will now be elected only from the majority province,” he contended.

The introduction of a proposal by the PTI’s outlawed leadership, he cautioned, whose implementation could endanger the federation, was a testimony to their political bankruptcy.