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The role of an opposition in a parliamentary democracy is like that of a sincere friend who grabs your arm to forcefully pull you back and save from falling into an unseen ditch in front. The arm grabbing and pulling may seem a violent act but it saves one from getting into trouble or getting hurt. The clichéd example of government and opposition being two wheels of a cart is always valid. The success of parliamentary democracy is devalued if the opposition hesitates to take firm stand on national issues or law making and fails to perform its role effectively.
The aim of having a parliament is to provide a forum to debate state and people’s business in public and draw the benefit from the views of the members. The government must remain aware of all pros and cons of an issue that comes up before it for law making or making a decision. If the opposition is fully aware of its responsibility and acts with purpose then the government is able to run the state’s affairs in a far better manner for the benefit of the people. The presence of a strong opposition in a parliament is therefore essential for the success of democracy. Democracy can function smoothly as long as its structure continues to have strong pillars of tolerance, trust, freedom of expression in a civilized manner and the right to dissent. Without a vibrant opposition that is sincere to the state and alive to the issues facing it, a parliamentary democracy turns pallid and fails to achieve its objective.
Unfortunately, the political parties in Pakistan do not follow democracy in practice and are not quite democratic in the true sense. They remain focused more on grabbing power to rule the country while ignoring the crying needs of the people or other grave issues facing the state. Democratic character of our political parties is always questioned in view of their functioning on the basis of ancestral politics and non-existence of a truly democratic process to elect office bearers in the party. Most of the political parties in Pakistan have their top leaders from their founder’s family, be it a Bhutto, a Sharif, or a Chaudhry. It goes to the ‘credit’ of these parties that they managed to manipulate and pollute the Constitution by getting a clause inserted through the 18th Amendment that elections within a political party were not mandatory thus cementing their scheme to confine the top leadership to the ‘selected’ ones instead of the popular or deserving ones. How can this be called an act to promote democratic ethic? Democratic process of election should not be restricted to general elections only where people elect representatives to the parliament. The spirit of democracy demands that the process of election should include all tentacles of the structure including election within a political party.
The role of opposition in Pakistan during the past decades has remained questionable as their focus has mostly been on making every effort to fail the government of the rival political party/parties by hook or by crook and topple it to create an opportunity for their own party’s return to power. The decade of 1990s saw the PPP and Muslim League (Nawaz) taking turns to rule the country and while sitting on the opposition benches, always trying to pull the other party down instead of raising the grave issue facing the country. The parties in power thus remained busy in countering such moves of the opposition and were distracted from devoting their full attention towards progress of the country. The experience of that decade’s flawed democracy, it appears, has not taught enough to our politicians who continue even today to focus their energies on non-issues and ignore the real issues like: inflation, power crisis, shortage of food items due to hoarding by the mill owners, rehabilitation of flood affected population, security of the common man, law and order situation in Sindh and Baluchistan, health care, unprecedented corruption, the wave of extremism/terrorism, unemployment, declining foreign trade, etc.
We have two major political parties in Pakistan namely Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) and Pakistan Muslim League – Nawaz Group (PML- N) who has enjoyed power since 1988 except for the period of eight years when General Pervez Musharraf was the President. Since February 2008 PPP is enjoying a majority in the Assembly with the help of a coalition and PML-N is sitting in the opposition. When the government was formed in 2008 these two major parties showed some restraint and pledged cooperation to make democracy succeed. Mian Nawaz Sharif’s PML-N, extended full support to President Asif Zardari and allowed PPP to form a government. During the period of his exile Nawaz Sharif had been maneuvering to forge an alliance against Pervez Musharraf by holding conferences in London and had also roped in Benazir Bhutto to have PPP on board. He got a Charter of Democracy signed in London by the political parties which were not in the government at that time. Later, after the death of Benazir Bhutto he claimed ‘reconciliation’ with PPP on the basis of that Charter of Democracy.
Asif Zardari was not a signatory to that Charter but accepted it as a gesture of goodwill ‘for the sake of democracy’ which was the need of the hour for him too. PML-N agreed to be part of the coalition by having a few ministries in the government. Soon this arrangement failed and PML-N withdrew its ministers from the cabinet preferring to sit on the opposition benches but continued to support the government of PPP. All eyes were set on Nawaz Sharif, expecting his party to play the role of a strong opposition effectively in the elected Parliament to provide a check on the working of the government. Alas, his party disappointed and remained subdued with occasional rhetoric, allowing the government to put up a show of poor governance and commit blunders. As a result, the state suffered once again. We are now experiencing a democracy with an opposition that has been far from being effective to check the misrule of PPP’s coalition government.
After having ‘enjoyed’ a period of cooperation for two and a half years the leading opposition party – PML-N has suddenly realized the president and his party-men are corrupt and unable to run the government. The honeymoon between the two major political parties of the country is over as Mian Nawaz Sharif has assessed his diminishing popularity within and outside Lahore due to his party’s (or his own!) wrong moves and decided to launch a volley of allegations against President Asif Zardari and the coalition government accusing them of corruption, misrule and bringing Pakistan on the verge of destruction. All the vices and weaknesses of the ruling coalition remained hidden from the eyes of the opposition for such a long time and have now all of a sudden surfaced for them to take a notice. Nawaz Sharif is now proposing another long term charter naming it ‘Meesaq -e- Pakistan’ to take the country out of the present quagmire and put it on road to progress and prosperity. He wants all political parties of the country to sign this charter but fails to define the method to achieve the objective. His party has let down the nation as an effective opposition in the parliament and failed to check wrong moves or policies of the government so far, thereby contributing towards bringing Pakistan to the present critical stage where its survival as an independent sovereign state is also being debated. Under the circumstances what can one expect from the present opposition that has wasted thirty months in its ‘goody goody’ relationship with the government? In fact some of the members of the parliament who are not from PML-N have been far more vocal and effective in their positive criticism of the government. The fact of the matter is that Pakistan at this stage needs a competent government that is held accountable by a strong and hawk-eyed opposition to put the country back on the rails for progress and prosperity taking it out of the present crisis ridden situation. 
Munir Ishrat Rahmani is a former Colonel of the Pakistan Army. He is a graduate of the Command and Staff College, Quetta and has fought during the 1965 and 1971 Indo-Pakistan Wars. He was stationed in East Pakistan during the 1971 conflict and is the author of a forthcoming book on Indo-Pak military history.
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