Governance reset idea gains traction
The debate over creating new administrative provinces gathered fresh momentum on Saturday as the Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan (MQM-P) threw its weight behind the ongoing calls for structural reforms, arguing that Pakistan could neither modernise its governance nor revive its economy without redrawing its administrative map.
Backed by Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi's recent remarks on administrative restructuring, MQM-P leaders said Pakistan's economic, political and governance crises could not be resolved without creating additional administrative units, devolving power to local governments and dismantling hereditary politics.
However, the PPP rejected the proposal, saying the Constitution required approval by a two-thirds majority in the relevant provincial assembly before any new province could be established.
Addressing a crowded press conference at the party's Bahadurabad headquarters, MQM-P Chairman and Federal Education Minister Dr Khalid Maqbool Siddiqui said Pakistan's future depended on transferring political leadership from hereditary elites to the middle class and the ideological heirs of the country's founders.
Siddiqui maintained that MQM-P had consistently challenged hereditary politics by bringing ordinary middle-class citizens into representative institutions and vowed to continue that struggle.
The MQM-P chairman said provinces were not immutable or sacred entities and could be reorganised to improve governance.
He said MQM-P had long advocated administrative provinces and faced accusations of treason for doing so, but claimed that traders, industrialists, workers and ordinary citizens were now endorsing the party's position.
According to Siddiqui, those still opposing new administrative units were pursuing "a particular agenda" contrary to Pakistan's interests.
Separately addressing a press conference at the National Press Club in Islamabad, Former prime minister and Awaam Pakistan convener Shahid Khaqan Abbasi also threw his weight behind the idea, saying that the government was also awakening to the fact that the current state of affairs would not last longer.
"I am grateful to my interior minister for acknowledging after four or five years that the country is not running."
"It should have been discussed in parliament or the cabinet. The country knows it is not running, but it has finally dawned on the rulers."
Referring to Inter-Services Public Relations chief Lt Gen Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry's press conference, Abbasi said that the military's spokesperson had acknowledged this.
However, he noted, "there are always people who do not want meaningful change".
PPP rejects proposal
Responding separately, Sindh Labour and Human Resources Minister and PPP leader Saeed Ghani rejected the suggestion that provinces could be created through political demands.
Addressing a news conference in Karachi, he said the Constitution clearly prescribed the procedure.
"New provinces cannot be created simply because someone demands them. Under the Constitution, they can only be established after the provincial assembly concerned passes a resolution with a two-thirds majority."