‘Controversial commission’ may jeopardize new provinces’ demand

With the announcement of an “incomplete and controversial commission” for creation of Southern Punjab and revival of provincial status of Bahawalpur, political sloganeering over the creation of new provinces is all set be jeopardized, despite the fact that the mainstream political parties have been playing to the popular demand of carving out smaller provincial units for over two years.
Almost all major political parties of the country, including Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz, PML-Quaid, Muttahida Qaumi Movement, Awami National Party, Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-Fazl and others have been using the media to raise a voice for creating smaller provincial units.
On the contrary, all these parties’ governments, either in the Center or provinces, have violated the constitution by not holding local government elections since coming into power in 2008. Though President Asif Ali Zardari had sent a letter to National Assembly speaker for forming a commission on new provinces on May 30, it took Dr Fehmida Mirza to lay it before the House a month and eleven days while the commission which had been mandated in its terms of reference to submit its recommendations over the subject in one month, was formed incomplete after the delay of two-and-a-half months.
The PML-N has already raised its concern over the commission, with Leader of Opposition in National Assembly Nisar Ali Khan claiming his party had not been contacted for its nominations and the nominations were made in isolation by the speaker and there was no rejoinder from the speaker’s chamber who was in the US for a minor surgery. The NA speaker constituted the commission in pursuance of the message received from the president and authorization by the National Assembly on July 11, 2012. Despite the long delay, the speaker could gather the names of only 12 members of the commission while two members of the Punjab Assembly are yet to be nominated, said a notification issued to this effect by the National Assembly Secretariat.
“Two members of the Provincial Assembly of the Punjab would be included as and when their nominations are received from the Speaker Provincial Assembly, Punjab,” added the notification. Talking to Pakistan Today, Saud Majeed, the commission member from the PML-N, said the commission had been formed to jeopardize the demand of new provinces. He said the commission was so much controversial that his name was added without his information while the party had also distanced itself from the nomination.
“Even from PPP, no member voicing for provincial status fro Bahawalpur has been added and rather those opposing the demand have been added,” he claimed. The idea of creation of new provinces was actually conceived and raised by former information minister Senator Mohammad Ali Durrani who had submitted such a bill on June 25, 2009, with the Senate Secretariat seeking amendment in the constitution for facilitating the process of creating new provinces with a simple majority of parliament. Durrani had asked parliamentary committee on constitutional amendments headed by Raza Rabbani to include his bill as the 19th Amendment, but it was rejected by the committee due to the narrow-mindedness of the members. “I am quite concerned the way commission has been formed. This might jeopardise the entire concept of smaller units carving. This is something alarming. However, I hope better sense will prevail as the president looks focused and committed to the cause of new provinces,” he added. “My bill had sought making the procedure of formation/creation of new provinces simplified and reflective of wishes and wishes of the people of the country for faster development of the country. It is imperative to form new provinces of a manageable size. This will not only make the administration easy but the under-developed areas will be able to make rapid progress,” Senator Durrani said while talking to Pakistan Today. “The foremost need today is adaptability to the demands of the changing times and to introduce international administrative practices into our system. To better address to the needs of growing populations, nations around the world have formed new and smaller administrative units. But we have failed to do so since 1947. We urgently need to follow the success story adopted by our neighbors decades back,” he added. He said developed countries made considerable efforts to promote good governance by forming smaller administrative units for better delivery system of justice, basic human rights and development. However, “the greed of ruling elites in Pakistan to centralize power has remained a constant factor for over more than half a century. To ensure good governance, we need to look through a much broader and selfless perspective and not just as a land of five metropolitan cities which eat away 70 percent of our resources and are growing by each day”, he added. Considering the huge population and weak institutions of the country, power needs to be decentralized. From the US to Spain, decentralization has played a major role in democratic development and high quality of governance. “But there is a tendency of our leadership to put more and more resources to the federal and provincial capitals rather than devolving them to the under developed cities and districts for the common good of the people,” he added. Asked to elaborate his viewpoint, Senator Durrani said even minor decisions were being made by every chief minister and for a population of 81.5 million in Punjab, there was one health secretary, one education minister, one finance minister, one housing secretary and so on, who can’t even look after affairs of central Punjab. “Resources need to be decentralized not only to provinces, but there is a dire need to make sure distribution of resources to all districts and tehsils on headcount basis. I have demanded smaller administrative units with a purely nationalistic approach which has no relation of any sort to linguistic or ethnic bias,” he added.