The poll in Gilgit-Baltistan

The elections in Gilgit-Baltistan (G-B) have passed off relatively peacefully, allegations of rigging appear to be limited. Fortunately, there do not appear to be any reports of deaths as a result of the electoral process and the final count is still awaited from some polling stations. All of which ought to sound (fairly) positive when compared to the violent shambolic mess that prevailed in parts of Pakistan in recent by-elections. In the wake of a peaceful poll, the unfortunate reality is that for all their worthy and law-abiding intent, the people of G-B still have no parliamentary representation in the federal government in Islamabad. The reason for this is that like Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK), G-B is not formally a part of Pakistan, has not been since Partition, and shows no sign of being so in the foreseeable future. The region is administered by Pakistan under a UN mandate which gives it a superficial outwards impression of being a province of Pakistan, but in functional terms it isn’t — and there are many in G-B who are far from certain that they want it to be so anyway.

The region was promised a similar status to that of AJK but it has yet to achieve that kind of self-determination. Although G-B has functional mainstream political parties as well as a plethora of smaller independent political groupings, the G-B Assembly is little more than window dressing. Leading lights of both the PPP and the PML-N only appear north of Raikot Bridge once in a blue moon, mainly because there is no real political capital to be exploited in an area that is divorced from the powerhouses of Islamabad and Punjab — the two parcels of Pakistan which have provided most of the senior administrators for the last 50-odd years to the delight of nobody. The area raises little or no revenue and is heavily dependent on the Centre. The ‘sensitivity’ of the entire region has crippled the tourist industry that once thrived there and it remains politically peripheral. It will remain so until promises are redeemed.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 10^th, 2015.

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