An experiment bound to fail - yet again!

At an Islamabad business summit, Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi declared that Pakistan's governance system had "collapsed" and demanded a reset, including new administrative units or provinces. Unfortunately, every few years, an unrepresentative guardian or impatient saviour claims that politics has failed and only a bold experiment can rescue the country. Each promises efficiency, stability and clean government. Each weakens the institutions needed to restrain the next experimenter.

The pattern began early. The 1949 Objectives Resolution embedded religious sovereignty in the constitutional imagination, creating an unresolved tension between equal citizenship and ideological guardianship. In the 1950s, senior bureaucrats, uniformed personnel and accommodating judges treated government as a technical enterprise too important for politicians. The Constituent Assembly was dissolved; constitutionalism yielded to administrative command. Ayub Khan then tried his hand in regimental style: decisions at the top, obedience below. His controlled democracy suppressed disagreement. Yahya Khan inherited the edifice, and the refusal to honour the 1970 democratic mandate ended in East Pakistan's separation. Centralisation did not save unity; it destroyed it.

Bhutto restored civilian rule and delivered the 1973 Constitution. Yet nationalisation expanded a weak state's managerial burden, while political centralisation diminished democratic promise. Zia's 1977 coup arrived as another rescue mission, wrapped in Nizam-e-Mustafa. The Afghan jihad brought dollars and strategic relevance, but also weapons, militancy and ideological distortions whose costs still accumulate. After 1988 came government by remote control: elected leaders held office while unelected centres retained veto power. Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif contributed through patronage, personalised parties and poor governance, but repeated dismissals prevented democratic accountability from maturing. Musharraf's 1999 takeover recycled the formula - technocrats, enlightened moderation, devolution and a king's party. Foreign inflows provided temporary ease; durable institutions did not follow.

The civilian decade after 2008 achieved constitutional transfers of power and the Eighteenth Amendment, yet avoided reforms in policing, taxation, civil service and local government. The 2018 hybrid project then sold Imran Khan's charisma and anti-corruption appeal as a shortcut. His government had energy but little institutional strategy. Accountability became selective, opponents became the main project, and transformation dissolved when sponsor and protégé fell out. Since 2022, the imbalance has deepened. Parliament often appears to ratify decisions rather than make them; political competition has narrowed; and the judiciary and media face pressure. Pakistan now combines concentrated personal power with enfeebled public institutions.

This history does not make new provinces a bad idea. Pakistan's provinces may be too distant from many citizens. But "administrative units" and provinces are not synonyms. Provinces possess legislatures, fiscal claims and constitutional standing; districts do not. Redrawing boundaries without transparent criteria, local consent, revenue arrangements and safeguards could multiply capitals and bureaucracies without improving a school or police station. Nor is presidentialism a cure. Before redrawing the federation, Pakistan should implement Article 140A, which already requires provinces to devolve political, administrative and financial authority to elected local governments. Empower mayors and councils, professionalise the civil service and police, protect judicial independence, restore electoral competition and make parliament the venue for reform. If evidence then justifies new provinces, let a representative commission propose options and parliament decide constitutionally.

Pakistan does not need a tenth experiment conducted on captive and silenced citizens. It needs the first faithful implementation of constitutional democracy.