Dr Raheeq Ahmad Abbasi, Secretary General of Minhaj-ul-Quran International, has said that Parliament claims of being representative of the people of Pakistan but it should review the scope of its functions and quality of its decision whether they are in the best interest of people and the country. He said that the strengthening of institutions was inevitable for a real democracy. However, the political system, he said, continued to be occupied by a few hundred families who had their sole monopoly on the decision-making processes.

Dr Abbasi expressed these views while addressing the central working council of MQI in Lahore today. Faiz-ur-Rehman Durrani, Sheikh Zahid Fayyaz, Brig. (r ) Iqbal Ahmad Khan, Rana Fayyaz Ahmad, G.M. Malik, Qazi Faiz-ul-Islam, Jawad Hamid, Raja Jamil Ajmal, Ahmad Nawaz Anjum, Rana Muhammad Idrees, Aqil Malik and others were also present on the occasion.

MQI’s Secretary General said that a broad framework needed to be put in place which should spell clear principles for creation of new provinces. He said that new provinces should be carved out on administrative basis instead of linguistic and ethnic lines. He said that it was unfortunate that people’s interests were not reflected in the policies. He also criticized the arrangement of fixing prices of POL products and said that the people of Pakistan did not get any respite from the declining prices of POL products at the internal level as they continued to pay through their nose.