Myth of the parliament

The frenzied ravings of cricket captain turned politician Imran Khan, and the clerical clown from Canada, Tahirul Qadri, should be enough to induce any sane person to reach out for tranquilisers. They are self-righteous and unable to say anything without yelling. There is need for them to take a deep breath and heed the words of God: “…be modest in thy bearing, and lower thy voice: for, behold, the ugliest of all voices is the loud voice of asses” (The Quran 31:19).

They both intend to launch protests from today – exactly a year after the 2013 general elections. Imran has said that his campaign is wholly directed against alleged vote rigging while Qadri, with his usual flair for empty rhetoric, has sworn that he will not rest till he has demolished the ramparts of corruption and atrocious governance that have disfigured the political landscape of the country. Both claim that they are entirely motivated by the need to strengthen parliamentary democracy.

On a parallel track there has been debate in recent weeks among some political analysts in Islamabad whether the presidential or parliamentary system is preferable for South Asia. This has to be examined in the context of the recent history of Pakistan and India.

The first point that needs to be made is that in pre-partition India none of the founding fathers ever publicly spoke about a presidential system. It is also significant that the major leaders of the freedom movement were British educated barristers, notably Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, Jawaharlal Nehru, Liaquat Ali Khan and Vallabhai Patel.

Some of them would spend hours in the House of Commons listening to the debates and were influenced by British politics. Furthermore, starting from the adoption of the Indian Councils Act, 1861 till the passage of the Government of India Act, 1935 a series of constitutional reforms convinced them that the parliamentary system was appropriate for their country. It was only Jinnah who was not entirely convinced about this (and will be discussed later).

The argument has been advanced that the Westminster type of government is alien to the South Asian psyche and can never work. This is supported to an extent in some of the writings of Arthur Balfour (1848-1930). Balfour, one of the richest men of Britain, succeeded his uncle Lord Salisbury as prime minister in July 1902. In his introduction to the second edition of Walter Bagehot’s The English Constitution, he wrote: “Constitutions are easily copied, temperaments are not; and if it should happen that the borrowed constitution and the native temperament fail to correspond, the misfit may have serious results.”

Significantly, on November 4, 1948 Dr BR Ambedkar (1891-1956), an icon of the backward classes and architect of the Indian constitution, told the drafting committee of India’s constituent assembly, “Constitutional morality is not a natural sentiment. It has to be cultivated. We must realise that our people have yet to learn it. Democracy in India is only a top dressing on an Indian soil which is essentially undemocratic.”

On December 30, 1948 Ambedkar, who became independent India’s first law minister, conceded that the president should have discretionary powers: “Under a parliamentary system of government there are only two prerogatives which the king or head of state may exercise. One is the appointment of the prime minister and the other is the dissolution of parliament.” The Indian constitution came into effect on January 26, 1950 and Dr Rajendra Prasad was elected the president of the country.

But the relationship between the Indian president and prime minister has often been tense. Presidents Rajedra Prasad, Radhakrishnan and Zail Singh were assertive men. They would have undermined the system if there had not been checks and balances incorporated in the constitution. In his memoirs, the US ambassador, Chester Bowles, recalls: “On several occasions he (Radhakrishnan) expressed to me in a half joking manner that somehow after Nehru’s death or retirement the whole country could operate under ‘President’s rule’…”

Strangely, it was after Nehru’s death in 1964 that calls for the presidential system were first heard in India but this soon petered out. They were, however, revived when Indira Gandhi imposed emergency in 1975 and sought to make drastic alterations in the constitution. Her efforts came to naught and she was roundly defeated in the general election of 1977. She returned to power in 1980 and made another futile attempt to bring in the presidential form of government and this also fell flat. Since then the feeble lure of a presidential dispensation has lost its shine, and, for the last 34 years, parliamentary democracy has come to define Indian politics.

The constitutional history of Pakistan unfolded along a noticeably different groove. Under the 1962 constitution, which was promulgated by General Ayub Khan on March 1, 1962 and came into force on June 8 of that year, the country’s brief experimentation with the presidential system turned out to be an unmitigated disaster. The claim has been advanced that the Constitution of 1973 restored the parliamentary form of government. This is patently untrue. It was only under the 1956 constitution that a genuine parliamentary system was established. But this was undermined within two years by ambitious politicians.

The four-time prime minister of England and probably one of the most outstanding statesmen of his times, William Ewart Gladstone (1809-1898) wrote in his collection of essays, Gleanings of Past Years, that the British constitution “presumes more boldly than any other, the good faith of all who work it.” This presupposes a constitution with built-in checks and balances especially insofar as the powers of the head of state and head of government are concerned.

Under the conventions of the parliamentary system accepted in Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, the head of state has the right: (i) to be consulted; (ii) to demand information; (iii) to select the prime minister in the event of a hung parliament; (iv) the discretion to dissolve parliament; and (v) as a last resort, to dismiss the prime minister. In the words of a constitutional expert “These add up to a president and a prime minister each powerful enough to prevent the subversion of the constitution by the other, but not powerful enough to subvert it himself.”

It is the absence of this indispensible principle that is the fundamental flaw in Pakistan’s 1973 constitution. In the last 41 years that the constitution has been in force the country has been ruled either by dictatorial presidents or prime ministers. Till this is rectified, parliamentary democracy in its true sense will continue to be an illusion.

Jinnah probably anticipated this and archival evidence shows that he jotted the following note to himself: “Danger of parliamentary form of government (1) it has worked satisfactorily so far in England and nowhere else, (2) Presidential form of government more suited to Pakistan.” The first assumption was inaccurate because the system has worked in several countries. The second was an ipse dixit or a personal opinion and was proven wrong by the political experience of Pakistan in the 1960s. There is, therefore, no alternative to a parliamentary system.

Had Imran Khan’s protest rally in Islamabad today been prompted by the need to correct the structural imbalance in the 1973 constitution, he would have emerged as a visionary leader. He is undoubtedly highly educated but unfortunately, like other politicians, he is handicapped by an undergraduate mentality.

The writer is the publisher of Criterion Quarterly. Email: iftimurshed@gmail.com