the lawmakers have be fooled the nation in the wake of 18th amendment. The nation will be more under the vicious circle of feudals.

18th amendment is now presented in senate for approval.
on the same hand condition in hazara is worsening.
now politicians want to get 18th amendment approve from senate.
if they feel (which looks imminent)to change name, they have to bring it through national assembly by 19th amendment.
18th amendment is going to get approval at any cost.
looks like amendments are going to be routine for politicians.
waise be un k pas kaam to he nahi
hazara me lagi aaaag ko bujana buhat zarori he.

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Reality is something you rise above.

Well dear no one knows whats going to happen in next years. We are in constant phase of evolution. And it is quite possible thAT we may be demanding party elections after ten years. Its about our intellectual growth. So we must have legal basis where we could stand our point of view.
Afterall, no one expected that musharaf will be ousted in this way and that judiciary will become independent. Democratic forces should facilitate this transformation instead of hindering its way through such amendments.

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Whatever mind can conceive,it can achieve - W.Clement Stone

@ the stars

yes u r rite but overall 18th amendment is an amendment which restore the true and oringnal spirite of 1973 constitution of Pakistan and parliamentary form of govt as provided in the original constitution .and it is a very bold step 4m president Zardari ,because in history of Pakistan we couldnt found even a single example that any president who came into power made restrict and limited his powers during his own regime but President Zardari did it.so we should nt be biased.

well there are some points which are against the norms of democracy but we should criticise 18th amendment as a whole.but when the question arises regarding the practicability of 18th amendment.it may be unpracticable during PPP government because the president and governing party belong to the same party but this amendment will be good 4 future.

Our successive governments praise only themselves. Now they are calling the passage of the 18th Amendment a historic act. I think it is a disaster. It has reduced the parliamentarians to non-entities. They have again surrendered their rights. Any member voting according to his conscience that does not follow his party leader can lose his seat in parliament. In the Pakistan Military Academy cadets are told that their training is for 'character-building'. In our Constitution 'character' gets a very low priority. The members have to be, in our language, 'bezamir'. This does not go well for those who are praising the amendment without trying to understand it. The prime minister may be happy that power has been transferred to him. I would just like to see him use it.

Parliamentary theocracy —Yasser Latif Hamdani

The 18th Amendment reintroduces the requirement for the prime minister of the country to be a Muslim. Pakistan’s slide down the slippery pole of religiosity is quite clear

Frederick Douglass — thegreat 18th century American statesman and abolitionist — once described democracy as a way to take turns. He was a one-man resistance to the tyranny of the majority and its confusion about democracy. It did not occur, however, to the framers of the 18th Amendment that this was also the principle on which Pakistan was founded, i.e. a permanent majority shall not, by sheer force of numbers, dominate and oppress a permanent minority.

It is also forgotten, conveniently, what Jinnah told the legislators in very clear terms: “Even now there are some states in existence where there are discriminations made and bars imposed against a particular class. Thank God, we are not starting in those days. We are starting in the days where there is no discrimination, no distinction between one community and another, no discrimination between one caste or creed and another. We are starting with this fundamental principle that we are all citizens and equal citizens of one state.”

Now consider the bars that have been put on people of every community other than Muslims in the country since Jinnah’s demise. When, in 1949, the Objectives Resolution was passed, Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan reassured the minorities that under the constitutional dispensation so envisaged, a non-Muslim may become the constitutional head of state. The constitution thus framed several years after Liaquat Ali Khan’s assassination, however, closed the door to the President House on non-Muslims forever and it has been like this since 1956. Still, the 1956 Constitution was perhaps the most cognisant of Pakistan’s multicultural character and, while paying its due respect to the Islamic culture and civilisation, the constitution remained non-committal on a state religion and guaranteed complete equality. This is how Prince Aly Khan, Pakistan’s representative at the UN and the father of the current Agha Khan, described Pakistan’s unique status as an Islamic Republic and an inclusive democracy on May 27, 1958:

“Pakistan, with a personality of its own in the Muslim world, calls itself an Islamic Republic, in the sense that the overwhelming majority of its people, are of the Muslim faith and aspire to a social and political order based on justice and equality, in accordance with the spirit of the injunctions of Islam that I have quoted. The appellation ‘Islamic’, however, does not imply that Pakistan is a theocratic state, run by religious fanatics who seek to reduce the non-Muslim minorities in Pakistan to the status of inferior citizens. The relevant provision of our constitution, under which Pakistan became a democratic Republic on the 23rd of March 1956, lays down: ‘Section 5 (1): All citizens are equal before law and are entitled to equal protection of law’.

“The constitution further nullifies as void, any law, custom, or usage, which is inconsistent with the fundamental right to equality under the law, which is an enforceable right under an independent judiciary, the Supreme Court of Pakistan.

“This means that non-Muslims are guaranteed equality with Muslims under the laws of Pakistan.

“While it is true that the president of Pakistan must be a Muslim, he is, in fact, the symbol of the state, and the executive powers are vested almost exclusively in the prime minister and his cabinet. Pakistan is not unique in basing its political institutions on fundamental religious concepts. For example, a number of European nations, such as Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Ireland, Greece and the UK restrict the office of the head of state to those who profess the predominant religious beliefs of their countries.

“The leaders of the government of Pakistan are liberal and enlightened men, responsible to a freely elected parliament in accordance with the popular will. They function entirely within the framework of the constitution and laws of Pakistan. I am well aware that the people of the US are deeply committed to the doctrine of separation of church and state. We, in Pakistan do not have an established church as such. Basically, the fundamental values and virtues which you cherish and try to practice in the US, are virtually identical with those we believe in and try to practice in Pakistan.”

The 18th Amendment reintroduces in Article 91(3) the requirement for the prime minister of the country to be a Muslim. Pakistan’s slide down the slippery pole of religiosity is quite clear. Having been inflicted a moth-eaten Pakistan against his wishes, Jinnah had envisaged an egalitarian democratic state that would not distinguish between its citizens on the basis of faith. That vision was buried when his lieutenant, Liaquat Ali Khan, sought to create distinctions of majority and minority through the Objectives Resolution but Liaquat Ali Khan was quick to dispel any notion of barring any office to the non-Muslims in Pakistan. Against Liaquat’s advice, the framers of Pakistan’s constitution created exclusion at the very top but left democracy unfettered by the symbolism of the Islamic Republic. Against that better judgement, a left-leaning secular minded prime minister made Islam the state religion of Pakistan, persecuted a sectarian minority and closed the door on non-Muslims for premiership as well. Then an ‘Islamist’ dictator — in a bid to reduce the office of prime minister in stature — opened it to non-Muslims again.

As the prime minister gets back his rightful position in a parliamentary constitution, our latest liberal democrats have once again created an exclusion, which is untenable in parliamentary democracy. A ‘democracy’ where the leader of the house is from a certain community is no democracy at all. It is a theocracy. Let us a call a spade a spade.
source:http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default...5-4-2010_pg3_6

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Reality is something you rise above.

Good notes by the author. So do the western constitutions like in the USA or the British allow minorities to be the head of the governments as our constitution does not?

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Try not to become a man of success but a man of value.

The following article vindicates my stand on 18th amendment

What’s for the people in the 18th Amendment?

THERE’S a lot of gloating and back-scratching going on these days among our bloated parliamentarians. Besotted with success that took a full 9 months to take shape, they are jubilant as if they’ve found the Holy Grail of democratic emancipation after wandering through the wilderness of autocratic mauling and mangling of Pakistan for such a long time.

One could afford to be justifiably charitable to these parliamentarians who have otherwise little to show in the achievement box for all the money and resources spent on their comfort. The proposed amendment to the disfigured constitution left behind by Musharraf would, after all, restore power to parliament where it should reside in a parliamentary democracy, such as the one our puffed up leaders and democracy gurus claim to be working for.

Not surprisingly, however, there’s little or no festivity among the people of Pakistan to mark what’s being hawked as a ‘historic milestone’ in Pakistan’s crooked march to democracy’s cherished fairy land.

On the contrary, the people of Hazara, in their bastion in Abbotabad, are reacting vociferously and violently to what they see as a clever attempt to short-change them and usurp interests and rights; they’re up in arms against the renaming of their province as Khyber Pakhtoonkhwa, a macabre name in any case that makes little sense.

But while the Hazara people have an axe to grind with the deal-makers in the parliament — and seem ready to sacrifice blood to make their point — the rest of Pakistan is manifesting its disgust with the prevailing order, which includes the government and parliament, by taking to the street, en masse. From Peshawar to Karach, the people’s protest against a cruel and sadistic power shortage is making itself felt literally in flames; burning tires are translating their disgust in massive plumes.

The parliamentarians may congratulate themselves on having crossed the Rubicon to slay the demon of autocracy, but the people of Pakistan have little patience left for empty rhetoric and inane slogans. The parliamentarians may be concerned with the exercise of raw political power but the people of Pakistan are getting desperate about the appalling shortage of that power that should light their lamps and cool their sun-baked homes, not to mention turning again the idled wheel of the economy that gives them their daily bread after so much toil.

That the narcissistic legislators are infuriatingly out of sync with the people’s sentiments is evident in the obscene haste with which the bill of the 18th Amendment to the constitution has been rushed through the lower house of the parliament. The Rabbani Committee took nine long months to deliver a draft that seeks to amend about 100 clauses of the existing 1973 constitution — covering nearly one-third of it — but the members National Assembly took a mere two days to put their seal of approval on the detailed document. No deliberation, no discussion, no debate; nada. The Assembly has once again lived up to its reputation of being a rubber-stamp body whose denizens know not when to put their thinking caps on.

The callousness of the MPs is put into the sharpest relief in what the much-touted 18th Amendment doesn’t have for the people as well as for other pillars of the state.

Most ominously conspicuous by its absence is any blue-print in it for the empowerment of the people — the so-called font of the parliament’s powers to which their representatives masquerading as ‘democrats’ and ‘democracy-lovers’ never tire of paying lip service.

Pakistan’s perennial problem isn’t just bad governance, which stands exposed in all its damning dimensions in the present state of near-anarchy on the streets of Pakistan. Equally aggravating the malaise is the perpetuation of a non-democratic — if not plainly anti-democratic — culture holding the country’s myriad political parties and factions in its thrall. The proposed amendment doesn’t offer any clue or willingness on the part of its framers to offer a remedy in this department.

Bad governance that has now virtually paralysed the system is simply a symptom of the cancer of non-democratic values eating into our body politic. It isn’t surprising, therefore, given more than a half-century of un-interrupted corralling of power in the hands of a well-entrenched ruling elite, that governance today is being abused by a coterie of corrupt cronies and sycophants loyal only to Zardari and virtually saying pox to the people of Pakistan.

The 18th Amendment to the constitution merely re-cycles the concentration of power, from one set of wielders to another, within the established ruling order. It doesn’t make any attempt, at all, to inject the element of democratic culture in the sinews of established political parties that have had no infusion of fresh blood for a very long time.

In fact, the latest amendment brazenly removes the mandatory requirement of regular and periodical elections (sub-clause 4 of Article 17 of the constitution) within the ranks of political parties. How should one interpret this blatant disregard of a basic norm of democratic culture by our self-anointed ‘reformers?’

The ineluctable reality is that every political party in Pakistan is democratic in name only. They’re, otherwise, nothing but family concerns operating on the template of a private limited company, with all the shares and assets concentrated among family members and a select band of loyal and unquestioning cronies.

The PPP is a fief of the Bhuttos and, lately, of the Zardaris. PML-N is a family business of the Sharif clan and its familial acolytes. ANP is owned and hogged by the Wali family, and the JUI by Fazul Rehman and some like-minded faithfuls. The Chaudhris of Gujrat have their lock on PML-Q with Musharraf-loyalists making up its second tier. No wonder Chaudhry Shujaat is threatening to rock the boat in the Senate for the passage of the bill; the strategy for it may have been worked out in Chaudhry Pervez Ilahi’s recent meeting with Musharraf in London.

The urbanised, middle-class and intelligentsia-based MQM is perhaps the most telling example of how undemocratic the culture of our political parties could be. For public consumption, MQM is run on a collegial model with the Raabeta Committee supposedly taking major decisions by consensus. But the Raabeta itself is an un-elected and fully nominated outfit on the model of a Stalinist Politburo. Worst, still, is the fact that the Politburo can be overruled by the party’s reclusive ‘leader’ who operates from the shadows like a typical mafia don; his word is Delphic and can’t be questioned.

How could these undemocratic and feudal-minded parties which have never held elections of any kind within their ranks, profess to be democratic and extend their claim to speak for the rights of the people — the principal stake-holders of a democratic polity? Investing the nurturing of democracy in their grubby and soiled hands is tantamount to letting Al Capone run the Revenue collection.

The bottom-line is that the people of Pakistan have nothing to feel upbeat about in the present dispensation of power because it offers no room for their participation in the process or for their emancipation and empowerment. Pakistan’s tenuous democracy remains incarcerated within a ruling elite whose sole concern is focused on recycling power within its domain so that each stake-holder may have a stab at wielding it periodically.

Back to why the parliament is showing such contempt for comprehensive debate on the proposed amendments and betraying unwarranted alacrity to get done with rubber-stamping it? The devil, literally, is in the details, especially those relating to the appointment of judges to the apex court.

There was ostensibly no justification to appoint a special committee for doing away with Musharraf’s blatant 17th amendment to the constitution. That could have been done by the parliament in the same manner it has approved the 18th Amendment; all that was needed was the will to do it. But the will wasn’t there. The ruling cabal was keen to drag its feet on the demand, just as it had procrastinated and finally licked the dust in humiliation on the restoration of Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry.

The idea was to buy time and come up with some institutionalised mechanism to have a foot in the door on the appointment of judges to the top echelons of the judiciary. The rulers just wanted to get even with the top judiciary which had been restored much against their will because of the people’s power.

The rulers got lucky in their strategy for the judges as they found a consensus among all the stake-holders in the parliament on their appointment. The consensus wasn’t hard to reach because no political party worth its salt relishes the idea of a fully independent judiciary, notwithstanding their robust and loud-mouthed protestations to the contrary.
Musharraf wasn’t the first to assault the judiciary; he was only the meanest and crudest, by far. Some of the very same ‘democrats’ now feigning their allegiance to an independent judiciary were no less brazen in their own assault against the ramparts of the apex court.

The obscene haste to get done, in a jiffy, with rubber-stamping the mechanism of parliamentary ‘oversight’ of the judiciary, woven into the matrix of the 18th Amendment, has only one purpose: stymie the people of Pakistan with a fait accompli on an issue for which their civil society fought a well-heeled and dug-deep dictator tooth and nail. The assault on the judiciary’s independence is still on, albeit in a more humane and civilised disguise.

The people of Pakistan have been thrown another gauntlet. It’s their call now. Will they take it? Will they have the stamina left, after a whole-sale draining of their body fluids as a consequence of 16-hour-long power black-outs, to rise to the occasion and call the bluff of their dictatorial democrats? The jury may remain out on an answer for sometime.

http://www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/...-amendment-840

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Whatever mind can conceive,it can achieve - W.Clement Stone

looks like 18th amendment is having hurdles
mr.President may reject it

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Reality is something you rise above.

Mr. President is not in the position to reject 18th amendment because National assembly and senate has passed 18th amendment with majority. At this stage, if he rejects, it will not be in favor of his government.