The second election to the Legislative Assembly of Gilgit-Baltistan is taking place with great fanfare after six months’ efforts of a PML-N appointed interim setup to muster support in the coming election. This Legislative Assembly is a result of the reforms of December 2009 that was called GB “Empowerment and Self-governance” and it was an order issued by the President of Pakistan. Since then we have seen that this process is as flawed as the treatment of Gilgit-Baltistan by Pakistan has been since Gilgit-Baltistan’s people broke the yoke of the Maharaja of J&K and liberated themselves – just to fall under the new yoke of Pakistan. Instead of ‘freedom and self-determination Gilgit-Baltistan became a colony of Karachi and then Islamabad and the presidential order of 2009 did not change that either.
Until today GB has not been given the status of a full-fledged province of Pakistan and is governed through the bureaucrats of Islamabad. Until today Gilgit-Baltistan is neither represented in the National Assembly of Pakistan nor in its Senate and the GB Council that is the de facto government of GB has only symbolic representation of the people of Gilgit-Baltistan. Refugees of Kargil and Laddakh living in Gilgit-Baltistan and other parts of Pakistan have no representation whereas refugees of Jammu and Kashmir have twelve seats reserved for them in AJK Assembly where till 1964 Karagil/Laddakh refugees also had one reserved seat; that is why it is considered as an instrument in the hands of the Ministry of Kashmir and GB Affairs. Thus the election to the 24 seat legislative assembly is a symbolic act at best and a fraud otherwise because elections will be rigged as they have been in KP and the rest of Pakistan and then the assembly will be only a fig leaf of democracy.
One wonders anyway why, since GB is not a part of Pakistan, how Pakistani parties are allowed to play their dirty games there and poison the GB people with their shenanigans? Already this foul play has worked and GB representatives and people have changed the parties more often than their undergarments, always depending on who will be in power next under the influence of rubber stamp executive setup to indulge freely in corruption.
The real thing in GB is that Gilgit-Baltistan has to be finally made a full-fledged province of Pakistan constitutionally and the practice to rule it through presidential order has to be given up. This can’t have any influence on the Kashmir dispute because one) GB did not remain a part of J&K after it was self-liberated by people in 1947-8 and annexed under Karachi Treaty, and second) India has in violation of UN resolution and British partition plan unlawfully integrated its part of J&K into the Indian federation and still upholds the claim to all of the former princely state. Holding election to a powerless assembly is not helping the GB people.
ALI ASHRAF KHAN
Karachi