Post-devolution: ‘Better governance needed for transition’

Speakers recommend cooperative development, conflict resolution.

ISLAMABAD:

After devolution, the quality of governance needs to improve at the federal and provincial levels for a successful transition.

This was the crux of a two-day workshop on “Consolidating democratic devolution” for civil society organisations and media persons that opened at a local hotel on Tuesday.

Pildat President Ahmed Bilal chaired the session, while Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs Chairman Awais Leghari inaugurated the workshop.

Referring to the 18th amendment, he said it is indeed a landmark legislation that has provided a legal framework to enable democratic devolution.

This transfer places increased capacity demands on the role of the provincial government and a greater understanding of and adjustment to this monumental shift on the part of federation, he observed.

However, governance at the federal and the provincial levels needs to be improved and support is needed to develop existing inter-governmental institutions for more cooperative development practices and to develop conflict resolution at federal and provincial levels.

Dr Leslie Seidle of Forum of Foundations, spoke on intergovernmental relations in federal systems: comparative structures and dynamics.

He shared the idea of cooperative federalism, in which the two systems work together as partners in pursuit of public interest, neither is subordinate to the other.  “In 2014, even in federations that have been around for two centuries, life is not neat.”

[In the 18th amendment] the national economic council has more of a mandate in the policy field than it did previously so this is definitely a good base on which to build on, he stated. “The interprovincial coordination committee, which is not in the Constitution, is a hybrid which is chaired by a federal minister.” This needs further improvement.

The workshop was organised by the Pakistan Institute of Legislative Development and Transparency (Pildat) in collaboration with the Forum of Federations in Canada.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 29^th, 2014.