The 18th amendment made a truly historic step towards the process of devolution of powers in the country. But the devil, as they say, lies in the details. The details, however, don’t lie in the amendment. After all, the text of the constitution is no place to be specifying nitty-gritty details.
The devolution of ministries isn’t a clean process. The fate of certain departments within many of the ministries is open to interpretation. Some of these departments, which were claimed by the Punjab government specifically, were lumped together into the three new ministries that were formed to accommodate new coalition members from the PML(Q).
The Punjab government is said to challenge these transfer of ministries in the Supreme Court. No sudden move, the decision follows a lack of response from the PM secretariat to two written complaints about the devolution of the concerned departments. The subsequent shifting of these departments to the three new ministries sealed the deal and has provoked the PML(N) to seek legal recourse.
They do have a strong case when it comes to at least some of the departments. Even without the contentious departments, out of the three new ministries (human resources development, technical education and national harmony) two definitely deserve to be provincial subjects and even the name of the third makes no pretense about the fact that it is a hurried project intended to accommodate wily coalition members.
The efforts towards devolution are going to be recalled as some of the most significant achievements of the PPP. It is imperative, however, to ensure that the spirit of the 18th amendment is followed. The one-step-forward-two-steps-back approach towards the process will not serve anyone’s interests.
The impulse to hold on to power is not the domain of any since particular party. No last word on decentralisation, the N League. Plead a genuine case as it might at the provincial level, its attitude towards the district tier of government has been far from ideal. It will take much to change these attitudes but we can take comfort in the fact that the ball has been set rolling.