Attempt to unite? 28 parties to attend APC on census

PPP calls meeting to discuss code of conduct for population count

KARACHI:

Around 28 political parties are expected to sit together today at CM House and discuss an acceptable code of conduct for the upcoming population census.

The call for an all-parties' conference (APC) was made by the ruling Pakistan Peoples Party, which has invited 27 other political parties, including Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), Jamaat-e-Islami (JI), Pakistan Muslim League - Functional (PML-F), Pakistan Muslim League - Nawaz (PML-N), Awami National Party (ANP) and Sindhi nationalists to share their concerns over the process. The population census, which is supposed to be held every 10 years, has been scheduled for March after a lag of 18 years.



On the agenda

All political parties were unanimous in their demands for a fair, transparent and reliable procedure to hold the census. But many shared their concerns about the counting procedure since the results affect not only the division of revenue but also the number of seats in the provincial and National assemblies.

There is a conspiracy afoot to convert Sindh into a minority to control its resources, shared PPP federal council member and former federal minister Lal Bux Bhutto. "Our first demand will be to give all provinces equal representation in the census commission," he said, adding that Punjab currently dominates the commission, which has no representation of Sindh and Balochistan.

The census field staff, such as enumerators should be neutral and data processing of the census must be carried out at the provincial level instead of the federal level, he added. "Our demand will be to enhance the house counting from three days to at least one week because many people live in far flung areas of rural Sindh and may not be covered in this limited time," he said.



Sindh information adviser Maula Bux Chandio shared the importance of the census to their party. "Census is a matter of life and death for us and any delays in conducing it or suspending it is tantamount to altering the exact results," he said, speaking to the media on Saturday.

The PPP has convened the APC to obtain unanimity on the census because it is a highly sensitive issue that is directly linked to the status of the province, he explained. The people of Balochistan have also started yelling because they are being transformed into a minority due to the influx of people from other provinces, he claimed, adding that Sindhis are also afraid of becoming a minority in their own province.

He did, however, add that he does not consider the Urdu-speaking community as a separate entity. They are Sindhis as they have their interests and everything in Sindh, he said. "They live and will die here with us."

Meanwhile, MQM Rabita Committee member Aminul Haq urged the government to refrain from repeating past mistakes. "The heavily populated Yousuf Plaza and alAzam residential apartments were counted as a single unit [in the past census]," he claimed, adding that this should not be repeated again. "Our prime demand is that the census should be transparent and crystal clear."  The MQM believes that 60% of Sindh's population is in urban areas while the rural population constitutes 40%, he added.

ANP Sindh secretary-general Younus Buneri demanded the deployment of law enforcers with the census team. "A political party had hijacked [the previous census] by holding the entire exercise at his party office," he claimed. "Census must be held under armed security to make sure it transparent."

JI naib ameer Asadullah Bhutto stressed the importance of the census as the distribution of resources among the provinces and allocation of assembly seats depends on it. "It should be a political exercise," he said, adding that any kind of anomaly will lead to conflict among the provinces. Ghulam Shah of Sindh United Party, a nationalist group, said they will demand the maintenance of separate records for illegal immigrants.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 21^st, 2016.