A justifiable anger

Implementation of the 18^th Amendment to the Constitution giving greater autonomy to the provinces was never going to be easy, not least because the federal government, despite being committed to the amendment, was less than delighted to find that some of its powers and functions were to be stripped away. Now the Senate Functional Committee on Devolution has expressed its concern regarding the establishment of ministries that ought to have been devolved being set up at the federal level but under other names. The committee described the practice as unconstitutional and it is difficult to disagree with them.

This revelation has any number of threads to it — where is the funding coming from for the ghost ministries, and from where is derived their power and authority? Do they complement or negate bodies set up provincial level? The centre is playing a divisive game that erodes the federation, and it cannot have been unaware of its consequences. There is much at stake, in particular natural resources and who benefits from their extraction and exploitation.

The Senate functional committee had written to all the provinces in order to determine the pace of devolution but thus far only Sindh had replied, and the committee chairperson deplored the fact that the federal government had not implemented any of the demands made by the committee. The committee and the provinces have every right to feel aggrieved. That ghost ministries are being set up at the federal level is a recipe for trouble. It fosters mistrust and adds a further layer of dysfunctionality to an already dysfunctional governance. The federal government appears to have no intention of observing the 18^th Amendment in letter or spirit and is blatantly flouting its principles. It was designed to give more equitable shares across all sectors and not only natural resources, and reduce or eliminate the infighting that bedevilled interprovincial relations for decades. Ignoring or circumventing the amendment takes us back to square one and the ultimate losers are the ordinary people of every province.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 6^th, 2017.

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