CSS Times

By: Syed Khawar Mehdi

IN over 70 years of Pakistan’s existence, our nation has been embroiled politically due to the ill-advised rabble-rousing tempest of Westminsterian democracy. Ill-chosen by the ruling establishment of the time and their obsession with everything British, and cunningly sustained to date as it diligently serves the well-ingrained vested interests of the rulers more than the ruled, it continues to inflict insult on the creativity, intellect and drive of the people with criminal disregard for the temporally pervasive crisis in governance, all in the name of the much-revered parliamentary system adopted from Westminster.

The Westminster system of parliamentary democracy, though it delivers effectively in England and is fervently admired in Pakistan, is intrinsically ill-suited to the prevailing realities of this land, its people and their needs. Instead, it perniciously and effectively serves political mafias, power brokers and feudal cliques — only to maintain their stranglehold on power without interruption. By no account does the failure of parliamentary democracy justify the military’s historical intrusions and violations, but a weak and unstable system invites all kinds of interference and does not really enjoy the honourable sanctum that its promoters and patrons so intuitively claim when facing critique and censure.