Fair shares for all

Whatever one’s political loyalty nobody could accuse the government of sitting on its hands and doing nothing in its early days. There is a long to-do list and one item has prioritised itself — trying to get a more equitable distribution and participation of the smaller provinces in respect of economic plans. A move to level the playing field has been made by President Arif Alvi on Friday October 5 with the proposal to reconstitute the National Economic Council to advise both federal and provincial governments regarding economic planning. It will be chaired by the PM and have 13 members. The NEC is constitutionally mandated under Article 156 which lays out NEC composition — which the government has tossed out of the window. Under what sort of twisted logic the PM arrived at the conclusion that the NEC should exclude members from Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa or Balochistan is beyond understanding. Although the Constitution is not binding in terms of the PM picks for membership, tradition has been for many years that federal members be chosen from every province.

The optics could hardly be more negative even if this was not the intention — and the impression is given that the PTI has little interest in fair shares for all and equal representation on what may well become an influential entity. Regional representation has also been ignored in the setting up of the Economic Advisory Council. The anomalous position has been arrived at whereby two brothers are to sit together on the NEC — there’s nothing like keeping it all in the family. To be blunt this is a ham-fisted move in terms of the NEC, which has turned what ought to have been a gold-star moment into something of a travesty. A hasty rethink would appear to be in order.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 7^th, 2018.

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