HYDERABAD, April 27: The director of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, I.A. Rehman, has urged political parties to inculcate the people with a sense of participation by holding consultations with them before taking major decisions about their destiny. At the same time he expressed apprehensions that the people’s dreams might be shattered once again.

Mr Rehman said at a gathering of the Sindh Democratic Forum (SDF) here late on Saturday night that people must have a sense of participation in policymaking.

He said that unfortunately Pakistan had always had a limited political capital that often landed people in a mess far bigger than the preceding one. Even though the poor had never been allowed to enjoy the fruit of democracy they still kept sacrificing for it.

At one time they were given basic democracy, which strengthened the authoritarian regime, he said.

He said that the polls had never been fair in the country and the state had always manipulated or manoeuvred them.

“Democracy is still far away from us as we don’t have resourcefulness, devotion, statesmanship and commitment. Here all vested interests have ganged up,” he said.

“Interestingly, we have not been able to do away with even a single of their misdeed. Zia introduced 270-A and Pervez Musharraf added 270-AA and 270-AAA,” he said referring to amendments made to safeguard the dictators’ interests.

Mr Rehman said that every dictator always protected his enactments under certain schedule but Musharraf went many steps ahead of his predecessors by changing even the dates of elections of parliament and president.

He asserted that no law could have legitimacy unless it had been debated by people and parliament. Civil society was more vibrant in 1958 than today but the 1958 martial law took several measures to pluck its wings, he said.

He said that civil society always needed space for interaction. The credit went to the people of Bangladesh for raising voice for inclusion of the chapter of fundamental rights in the Constitution and the prefix of “Islamic” in the Republic of Pakistan, he said.

Today, the authoritarian regime could not plant its surrogate regime but the democracy was still tied with presidency, he said. The new government should respect the wishes of people who had never seen democracy in a true sense, he said.

Mr Rehman called for doing away with people’s alienation from political process and stressed that they should be told that politics was something sacred which could also be used for doing good deeds.

He said that political parties were also authoritarian in their approach. “You cannot run the affairs of Badin, Mithi or Nawabshah while sitting in Islamabad. People of these areas should have the right to decide what they want to do,” he said.

He called for recreating the country with a cultural revolution in political parties. There should be institutional relief for people so that the have-nots should pin all their hopes on a party only to get some relief, he said.

The culture of monetary help for a sexually-assaulted woman or heirs of the deceased would not work as it was nothing but alms and amounted to insult of the poor, he said.

He said that some elements started hatching conspiracies a few days after the government was formed and everyone right from the presidency and media to intelligence agencies were asking why this or that thing was not taking place.

Mr Rehman came down hard on political parties for not coming up with a national thesis and showing contradictions in their approach in different provinces. In fact, the parties avoided working among the masses, he said.

“In our country politics has been eliminated and parties stood defunct while leaders still exist,” he remarked.