News
Monday, July 11, 2011
Mirza proposes creation of South Asia parliament
* NA speaker says parliament will enable respective countries to negotiate sustainable solutions to numerous problems
Staff Report
ISLAMABAD: National Assembly (NA) Speaker Dr Fehmida Mirza has proposed that the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation’s (SAARC) members should contemplate the creation of a South Asian parliament to sustain peace and prosperity in the region.
She said that it would be the largest forum of legislators, commanding the trust of 1.7 billion South Asians enabling our respective countries to negotiate sustainable solutions to our numerous bilateral and multilateral problems.
Fehmida said this in her keynote address at the working session of the 5th SAARC Speakers and Parliamentarians Summit being held in New Delhi.
She said that the conception of the SAARC parliament would infuse a new life into the SAARC forum besides supporting, guiding and protecting the emerging democracies of the region by becoming a vanguard of freedom in South Asia.
She said that we should collectively resolve to build peace, ignite sense of prosperity and consolidate democracy by strengthening trust between our people and parliaments. Fehmida said that the South Asian region has seen enough bloodshed, wars and conflicts; therefore, the parliamentarians should jointly bring an end to the miseries of the people by joining hands for a meaningful cooperation through experience-sharing, joint resource mobilisation and strong networking.
The NA speaker said that all SAARC parliaments are confronted with identical challenges which bear the burden of more than half of the world’s poor, malnourished, illiterate and disease-stricken people.
Fehmida felt that unfortunately democracy could not be consolidated in the SAARC nations due to a deeply entrenched authoritarianism in our respective societies, which never allowed the uninterrupted growth of a vibrant democratic culture.
She said that at the turn of the century, however, our common struggle for freedom, democracy and justice again bore fruits, as a wave of democracy was finally sweeping across the SAARC region. “Pakistan, Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Nepal were witnessing the dawn of a new era of people’s power,” Fehmida said.
She said that as parliamentarians, we were duty-bound to address the threats and challenges for managing democracy in our respective politics and added it was imperative for the strengthening of democracy that cross sections of the society are actively involved into the political arena through free and fair elections, an independent and impartial judicial system which ensures speedy and inexpensive justice.
Courtesy www.dailytimes.com.pk