If prevailing situation continues, history will remember rulers as Gorbachevs of Pakistan: Rabbani

ISLAMABAD: Former Senate chairman Senator Raza Rabbani on Tuesday slammed the ruling elite for pursuing power politics, ignoring the major issues facing the country, including devastating floods, TTP re-emergence and economic meltdown. He said the ruling elite must bear in mind, if the prevailing situation continued, history would remember them as the Gorbachevs of Pakistan.

“Political parties are engaged in power politics and crucial national security issues are on the backburner,” he said, adding that the current style of politics rekindled the memories of German and Italian era of fascism, where state institutions were threatened and destroyed. He said the ruling elite must realise that the internal faultlines of the Federation were deep and being supported by external forces. Pakistan today needed to focus on Nelson Mandela’s philosophy of “dismantling the legacy of the past and fostering reconciliation”.

The former Senate chairman said the parliament needed to take the lead to initiate an inter-party dialogue for drafting the Charter of Democracy II. If it was not done, the state would descend from fascism to a state of anarchy which would not be controllable. He said that the second phase needed an inter-institutional dialogue to affirm adherence to the concept of trichotomy of power. He said the Federation today needed such a dialogue, failing which the society and the state stood in grave danger.

Condemning the raid on the Parliamentary Lodges by police, he said this was the second time within four months that the sanctity of the Parliamentary Lodges was violated, first by the PTI government and now the incumbent government. “The Parliamentary Lodges are on the premises of parliament and no action can be taken there without the permission of the NA Speaker,” he said in a statement with reference to the raid on the room of Shahbaz Gill. “With our own hands, we are dismantling the democratic institutions and the respect that was due to them,” he said.

Rabbani also condemned the arrest of a TV anchor from Karachi and said it was not justified. “This along with the ban on a private TV channel is an attack on the freedom of press, a fundamental right under the Constitution,” he said.