Gilani offers to work with Nawaz Sharif
NEW YORK: Saying that ‘my main endeavor is to end the politics of confrontation,’ Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani said Thursday that he was willing to work with PML leader Nawaz Sharif.
‘I am sure we can work with Nawaz Sharif in strengthening the democratic process,’ Mr Gilani said in an interview with Wall Street Journal. ‘We have to return to parliamentary democracy on the lines of Westminster,’ he added.
Gilani offered olive branch to the newly strengthened leader of PML-N after a tumultuous week of standoff between government forces and opposition over the reinstatement of Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry.
Gilani vowed to return to parliament authority that it lost in 2002 when President Asif Ali Zardari's predecessor, Pervez Musharraf, gave sweeping powers to the presidency, including the power to dismiss parliament, the WSJ said.
The WSJ noted ‘the return of powers to parliament could help restore democratic checks and balances, advocates of the shift say, and possibly bring the opposition into the ruling coalition. Opposition leader Nawaz Sharif, a former prime minister, describes the current distribution of powers as Pakistan's biggest obstacle to a smoothly functioning democracy.’
The WSJ noted former president Pervez Musharraf took from the premiership and gave to the presidency the powers to appoint the chief of the armed forces, Supreme Court judges and the chief of the election commission, as well as send back for review any bill passed by parliament.
Mr Musharraf also made the president the supreme commander of the armed forces. Restoring those powers to the prime minister would return the presidency to its earlier, largely ceremonial position.
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