PAKISTAN: Appointment said intended to create "loyal opposition"

Photo: IRIN

ISLAMABAD, 26 May 2004 (IRIN) - The appointment of a politician from Pakistan's religious right as the leader of the opposition in the country's national assembly, more than a year and a half after general elections were held, is intended to create a "loyal opposition" which will only serve to scuttle democratic principles, according to analysts. Maulana Fazlur Rehman of the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA), a coalition of Islamic parties which won surprising gains in the October 2002 elections on the back of anti-US sentiment, was nominated to lead the opposition on Tuesday by the speaker of the lower house of parliament. The move sparked outrage amongst opposition politicians from the Alliance for the Restoration of Democracy (ARD) - the chairman of which was also a contender for the post - who regard the MMA as working in collusion with the government while pretending to sit in opposition. Analysts regard the move as undemocratic, pointing out that the appointment was announced without a mandatory vote to ascertain who should head the opposition. "The matter is not for the speaker to decide. At least, they should have asked for a vote," Hussain Naqi, a respected political commentator and member of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP), told IRIN from the eastern city of Lahore. "The MMA did not contest as an opposition party, they were an allied party in the elections. We don't consider this a positive development [for democracy]" he asserted. Rehman's appointment as opposition leader also makes him a member of the recently formed, 13-member National Security Council (NSC), whose formation was controversially passed by both houses of parliament in April, both times in the absence of the protesting opposition which had walked out. Other members of the NSC, which will be headed by the president, include the prime minister, the speaker of the national assembly, the chief ministers of Pakistan's four provinces, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee, as well as the heads of the army, navy and air force. "There's no future for democracy as long as a military general is ruling the country. The NSC is no democracy," M Ziauddin, the resident editor of the respected English-language broadsheet, Dawn, told IRIN in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad. The policy of "running with the hare and hunting with the hound", an analogy voiced often by Pakistani analysts to explain the MMA's close ties with the government, seemed apt, given Rehman's appointment, Ziauddin added. "The military's been very comfortable with the maulanas. They would not like either PML-N [a faction of the Pakistan Muslim League, loyal to deposed former premier Nawaz Sharif] or PPP [Pakistan People's Party] representatives sitting in the NSC," he maintained. Naqi agreed, insisting that Rehman's selection to be opposition leader was intended to "create a general loyal opposition!" "How can they be called the opposition when they are hand-in-glove in scuttling democratic principles?" he asked.