Intra-federation issues pile up without timely CCI meetings
The Council of Common Interests (CCI) is a pragmatic and sensible constitutional arrangement to debate sensitive issues affecting the provinces and the centre and to resolve them to the satisfaction of all parties before they turn into acrimonious and emotional public disputes. Because of its immense utility in easing tensions within the Federation, the CCI is required to meet after every ninety days, and to be presided over by the prime minister himself, with the chief ministers of the provinces and three cabinet ministers in attendance. In practice, the CCI has seldom met on time and the disaffected province with a grievance often takes its case to court to safeguard its interests. The much postponed matter of the national census offers one such instance. By postponing CCI meetings as a normal practice the outstanding questions multiply, the democratic process is stalled, institutions weakened, and a space is provided to other bodies to intervene. Nature abhors a vacuum.
The eagerly awaited latest CCI meeting has also been delayed, hopefully by a day only. One pointer to this is the summoning of a cabinet meeting by the prime minister, who was busy on a Quetta visit on the day originally planned for the meeting. This cabinet meeting is also mandatory by a court ruling which disallowed the chief executive from taking unilateral decisions on fiscal matters and instead adhering to the wiser principle of joint ministerial responsibility. For all these reasons the 30th CCI meeting will have to tackle a lengthy agenda of seven points, a couple of which have already raised the hackles of the provinces. One is the federal government’s proposed three percent levy on the provinces to fund the newly raised security force for the CPEC and another is the transfer of administrative control of all regulatory bodies to the concerned federal ministries.
It is difficult to visualise that this contentious and heavy workload can be gone through meaningfully in the single day reserved for the meet and also succeed in calming the provinces’ fears and apprehensions.
