Editorial
Making parliament functional still elusive
More sincerity needed on both sides
THE ninth parliament is going to complete its first year of existence on January 6. What has it achieved so far. On the positive side, to begin with, the parliamentary standing committees were constituted in record quick time and the opposition MPs were given chairmanship of some of the committees. The committee system has worked well. On the other hand though, the ruling party's promise of offering deputy speakership to the opposition remained unfulfilled. Even the middle road solution to have two deputy speakers and give one post to the opposition didn't materialise.
But on the principal issue of the opposition's participation in parliament which is crucial to the effective functioning of the JS, no headway could be made in the last almost one year. The opposition's boycott of parliament continues.
Against such a backdrop, the speaker's reported fresh initiative to bring the BNP back to parliament, by offering one more front row seat comes as too little too late. The ruling party with its vast majority in the parliament could be more generous earlier on to draw the opposition into the parliament. On the other hand, we see little reason for the opposition to have made seat arrangement a sticking point for this long a period conveying a sense of irresponsibility to the electorate.
We find the opposition chief whip's response to the speaker's offer baffling. He has stated that the seating arrangement is no longer an issue for the BNP! Now, the party is asking for unconditional withdrawal of all cases against its chairperson and her son. Whatever might be the logic behind such a demand, it is obvious that the opposition is more interested in wresting out as much as it can from the ruling party than joining JS sessions. They appear to be blissfully oblivious of the fact that the people voted for them, however limited the mandate, to speak on their behalf in parliament. The JS is the house of the people and not of the ruling party, so both owe it to the electorate to make the parliament the centre of national affairs. Speaking of the opposition, it cannot be make its attendance in parliament conditional upon fulfillment of its demands having nothing to do with the electorate as such.
The government, by withdrawing the cases against the ruling party political leaders through an administrative edict, has apparently given the opposition a handle to make a demand of their own that cases against its leader and her son be withdrawn. Actually, the whole thing should have been left to the court to settle if the government's intention was to uphold fair play untinged by any perceived political bias. We, therefore, believe that just as the government had no moral grounds to drop the cases against ruling party leaders without subjecting these to a legal process so is the opposition's demand for withdrawal of cases against its leaders morally indefensible.
In the ultimate analysis, the task of making parliament functional has to be shared by the major players without resorting to tough bargaining and brinkmanship that tend to be counter-productive as we witnessed many times in the past.
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