The Constitution & the provinces

THERE is, at present, a slightly unreal lull on our border with India. The threat of an Indo-Pakistan conflict appears to have receded somewhat. However, India’s intentions do not seem entirely clear.

Despite Sushma Swaraj’s visit for the Saarc information ministers’ conference to Islamabad, the Indian army does not seem to be doing anything other than staying put where it is. The results of India’s state elections, combined with the rising death toll in the wake of its fearsome communal violence, ought, rightly, to have put paid to further thoughts of war.

Yet it was not so long ago that, a prisoner of his own excessive philosophic doubt, India’s Foreign Minister and its Minister for Defence, too, had been categorically ruling out any expeditious Indian troop withdrawal from the border until Pakistan had proven its good faith on the ground. So, if de-escalation is on the cards, it can only be said to be a little bewilderingly so.

Notwithstanding, the current reprieve has allowed Pakistan badly needed breathing space as well as time to focus on relevant domestic issues. The government has been looking at ways of revamping the country’s constitution prior to the holding of general elections. The exercise seems, on the whole, to be aimed at providing the country with a broader representational base together with a more efficient system of governance that it has had in the past.

The proposed package of electoral reforms envisages additional seats for women and technocrats and an overall expansion of the provincial and national assemblies and senate with the NRB’s earlier condition of graduation for candidates still remaining in limbo. However, bigger — or broader — does not necessarily mean better. There has also, reportedly, been talk of the creation of further provinces in the country.

And if, as is expected, the constitutional amendments being considered go through, presidential power will stand substantially enhanced. All this sounds good, indeed, going by its sheer sweep, dauntingly so, but, in the absence of a supporting rationale or methodological frame, also rings a trifle hollow.

But first things first. The government should rightly have accorded priority to the business of clearing away some of the deadwood from the country’s conceptual backyard so as to be able to make a fresh conceptual or, for that matter, constitutional beginning. The NRB would have done well to have started by taking on the controversial Objectives Resolution.

Rather than be intimidated by this resolution, which was first moved by Nawabzada Liaquat Ali Khan in the Constituent Assembly on March 7, 1949, we should try to understand and interpret it correctly. This performs the vital, if somewhat delicate, task of situating the state of Pakistan in a necessarily distinctive cultural context in the post-Partition era by conferring a unique (Islamic) persona on it. At the same time, the resolution upholds the ideals of democracy and, indeed, pluralism.

It is thus, in a way theocratic in colour but democratic in intent. Nothing could have been more appropriate to the Muslims of the subcontinent engaged in the historic act of defining their own separate national space on the subcontinent at the threshold of their country’s constitution. Nothing could have reflected the hybrid identity of the people of this country, comprising Muslims and non-Muslims alike, more faithfully.

We should, properly, have no quarrel with this resolution. All it does, reasonably enough, is attempt to reconcile the religious creed of the majority with the secular credo of much of the Pakistani nation. If there are those who have been perverse enough to misconstrue or exploit it for the purpose of empowering fundamentalist Islam or other equally questionable ends, this can be said to have been attributable to the relevant mindset rather than to any flaw in the resolution itself.

The government’s agenda for constitutional reform presumably stems from a genuine concern on its part with securing the country’s future, with ensuring that there is no recurrence of the kind of administrative or systemic failure we witnessed, for example, towards the tail-end of the last Nawaz regime. If this is indeed the case, then the government will have to take some drastic steps relating to more than just the redistribution of prime ministerial power as currently allowed for in the Constitution.

Misuse of power by a prime minister is not, ipso facto, more pernicious than a presidential equivalent. If history has engendered a Nawaz, it has also sired a Zia, a fact lately implicitly conceded by President Musharraf himself. The point, perhaps, is to reduce the scope of power all round, which means, inevitably, curtailing power at the centre. This does not only mean devolution of power to the provinces but, if such devolution is to succeed, in fact, to be realized at all, a necessary relaxation of the constitutional stranglehold of the majority province over the remaining three provinces of the country.

We are not arguing for a confederal system or for a redefinition of Pakistan’s federating units along ‘cultural’ lines as envisioned by certain worthies of the extreme right. What we are advocating is a return to the spirit of the All India Muslim League’s crucial Lahore and Madras resolutions of March 23, 1940, and April 15, 1941, respectively, both of which provided for a Pakistan whose constituent units would be “autonomous and sovereign” and, hence, at the very least, for a better calibrated and more equitable order than we in Pakistan have hitherto known.

Of course, this is not to say that the thrust of the Delhi Resolution of the All India Muslim League Legislator’s Convention of April 9, 1946, was, despite its updated call for a single sovereign state for Muslims of the subcontinent, any different from that of these two earlier resolutions. It was not.

The sovereign Muslim state that had been called for in the Delhi resolution was designed to assemble not units from among which one would be constitutionally empowered to tyrannize over and exploit the rest, but a model of equality and social justice where the people of the zones concerned would both be “free from domination” and allowed “full scope to develop themselves according to their genius.”

The irrefutable authority of such ideological pointers aside, we should, at least after ingesting the bitter pill of Bangladesh, have learnt that wisdom lies in anticipating and forestalling an ill to come or that prudence is constituted by the ability to act voluntarily while there is still time to do so. Of course, the recent misadventure involving the Taliban has shown that we are quite as deficient in foresight and prudence as before. All the same, we could try, even against our better judgment, to redeem ourselves before it is, once again, too late and the forces of unreason, of rabid rightism, are enabled to have their way. We must not, at this critical juncture in the nation’s history, when its future is at stake, allow chauvinism or self-interest, cant or complacency, to cloud our vision.

The time has come for us to address the chronic problem of the balance of power relating to the majority and minority provinces in all earnest. The country can ill-afford the various administrative, economic, social and, indeed, electoral bottlenecks seemingly caused by this. The extraordinary Supreme Court imbroglio in Nawaz Sharif’s day, the National Finance Award, the quota system and, needless to say, the fabled ‘mandate’ are just a few cases in point.

While the country’s vested interests are naturally bent on preserving the status quo, the larger interest demands that we settle these highly contentious issues once and for all. There is, really, only one plausible solution open to us. If we bear in mind that, given the country’s steady decline in numerous respects, there may come a time when we are obliged to adopt a confederal system or something worse still, this can be described as the lesser evil. It is, heretical as this may sound to some, the division of Punjab into three separate provinces: northern, southern and central.

The country does not need any additional provinces, certainly not twentysix, as, reportedly, proposed by the NRB. In any case, a tripartite division of the majority province would finally dispel any such need, while possibly resolving what one believes to be the core issue of the country.

Time to crush terrorism once for all

MY long association with the rule of law has compelled me to bring into focus some painful realities which have led to the current depressing scenario as recorded by Mr Ardeshir Cowasjee in his columns in Dawn on March 3 and 10 and the excellent timely editorial “A blot on Pakistan’s face” published on March 10.

Sadly, while we Muslims looked the other way on the killing of innocent citizens, our brethren in faith continued their spree unabated. It moved a non-Muslim to lodge a strong protest on our behalf appealing for sanity so that we Muslims in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan could feel more secure than our brothers in India currently being subjected to similar terrorism, but not by their own castes.

We had thought the assassination of Shaukat Mirza would be the last gruesome incident of this nature. We have already lost so many professionals, mainly doctors and lawyers while many have left the country. In fact, this madness should have been dealt with by the state in 1992 when it had surfaced.

Merely banning and threatening to give “exemplary punishment” to the offenders hardly deter such inhuman souls who are deaf to the wailing of widows, orphans and mothers. The deterrence can only be the fear of being apprehended and expeditiously punished.

The accused involved in the savage incidents at two Imambargahs, when 20 noble souls were murdered in the early hours of February 25, 1995, in the holy month of Ramazan within a span of two hours, followed by the merciless killing of seven persons three days later in the presence of their families in the holiest of nights and of three maulanas of a mosque in November 1997, were all apprehended and awarded death sentence by anti-terrorist courts.

They still proudly stand before the courts, without the slightest of remorse appealing against their conviction which continues to be heard well represented by eminent lawyers shuttling between courts for over six years. This is seen as a mockery of justice through the tear-filled eyes of the victims’ families after each hearing. Sadly, if the bereaved families had not keenly pursued the cases all the accused would have been free to destroy many more lives with their perverted sense of religious fanaticism.

In comparison, the compassion shown by the French government in granting sanctuary to some of the victims’ families should be a lesson for our fellow Muslim brethren that Islam was spread through love, tolerance, justice and equality as demonstrated by the French.

No society in the world is self-disciplined. It is mainly the fear of punishment which governs morality, truthfulness, honesty and character of human beings across the world. Our criminals have no such fear as justice was buried with each of those innocent souls who fell victim to the ruthless acts of barbarism. Similarly, the parents of young barrister Shakir Latif return home after every court hearing more depressed.

In spite of having obtained a death sentence in the court, they now face senseless delays in obtaining verdict for final execution. We ought to hang our heads in shame. We even fail to give a little solace to the victims’ families by at least speedily executing the awarded ‘exemplary’ punishments. These are only some of the examples which have made the sectarian bigots bold and ruthless destroying the very fibre of our civil society.

We must now learn to invest in the rule of law without any further delay if we are to salvage our society. The resulting departure of leading lawyers, doctors and businessmen cannot give hope to the desire and aspiration of President Musharraf to bring about economic stability, as investors run shy from unsafe terrains. The present state of affairs of our society should shame our law enforcement and intelligence agencies for their failure to break the terrorist network.

Merely blaming each other for the poor quality of investigation, evidence, prosecution, impractical judicial system is no longer acceptable. The state and the judiciary must sit together and not act as adversaries, much to the advantage of the criminals and terrorists. They must accept their responsibilities and shortcomings, find the solutions, not only the faults, keeping the ground realities in mind.

Whether it be military courts (even the US government has opted for it against terrorism) or the Italian style faceless judges, or the lay justices from a cross-section of society appointed for jury trials assisted by legal experts for serious crimes such as murder, manslaughter, rape, armed dacoities, etc, as in Britain, before whom the expeditious trials are held and exemplary punishments given in the true sense of Islamic justice the issue must be settled once and for all. We must not allow the terrorists to continue destroying our civil society. All such perpetrators should be hanged in public.

The writer is chief of the Citizens-Police Liaison Committee (CPLC).

Why not more provinces?

THE article titled “NRB’s brain-child” by Anwar Syed, published in “Dawn” of Feb 17 must have perturbed many right-thinking people.

The writer has expressed his doubt about the status of provincial/state government vis-a-vis the federal authority. I believe that after upgrading a division to the status of an autonomous state, the federal government should retain minimum subjects with it and allow the proposed 26 states maximum autonomy. It should retain defence, external affairs, currency, communications, science and technology. The rest should go to the states authorizing them and the district governments to levy taxes.

Mr Syed has based his thesis apparently on the premise of “anti-devolution of power to grass-roots” plan. He prefers to stick to the system of administration left by our colonial masters. After all, the existing four provinces, i.e. the NWFP Punjab, Sindh and Balochistan are the remnants of British Raj. The NRB’s plan of “devolution” would remain incomplete without upgrading the divisions to the status of provinces/ autonomous states, which is also the main objective of the Pakistan Resolution of March 23, 1940.

Most people in Pakistan remain deprived of basic amenities like education, health care and shelter. Even our educated middle class and, of course, the ruling elite are anti-innovation and allergic to new ideas and prefer to follow the much treaded path. For this reason, they are opposed to transfer of power and authority to the grassroot level. When the Musharraf government declared the “devolution plan” it was termed by the top bureaucracy as a “demolition plan.” Even after the local government elections the bureaucracy is trying to sabotage the scheme.

Two points of Mr Syed’s article need special attention. First, he has highlighted the displeasure of Punjab and Sindh vis-a-vis the NRB’s project of breaking the existing four provinces into 26 or so new ones. Yes, the NRB plan envisages doing away with four provinces of the colonial era and instead upgrading 26 existing divisions. The proposed 26 provinces/states would be democratic units of the federation of Pakistan.

Secondly, he says that India on August 15, 1947, had only seven provinces (now 28 states) and the number had increased on linguistic basis. The writer says: “This happened because distinct linguistic groups, which often became violent, demanded the creation of these new provinces (states). The situation in Pakistan is not the same.” This means that the government should wait for violence to occur before it bows to the demand for “new provinces.”

The writer claims that many Muslim countries — Afghanistan, Iran, Turkey, Iraq and Egypt among others have a large number of provinces but these are essentially administrative, not political units. They have “governors but no legislatures.” What he conveniently forgets is the fact that many western countries are welfare nation-states and have federal set-up with federating states, all having elected governors and legislatures.

Pakistanis, in general, have a wrong notion about parliamentary democracy where there is duality of head of state (king/president) and the prime minister as in the UK. Nigeria experimented with the westminster system which failed and it switched over to the presidential system with smaller but autonomous federating units called states. Even the nomenclature of “provinces” is a colonial legacy and the term in vogue in British dominated dominions like the federating units of Canada, Australia, New Zealand. Normally in republics, the term of (autonomous) states is used.

The second and third generations of even well educated Pakistanis are unaware of the fact that at the time of independence and well up to the creation of “One Unit” there were 17 or so governments in West Pakistan. One, central, four provincial and about tweleve princely states (having internal autonomy). The princely states were better administered as compared to the condition after their merger with One Unit.

Up to the eighties, there were 80,000 governments in the US. one federal, 50 states and the rest were local governments called counties and special governments. Unfortunately, whenever any demand is made for smaller federating units in Pakistan, feudals, corrupt politician and top bureaucrats oppose it on the pretext of higher administrative cost. The fact is that the administrative expenditure. (recurrent budget) increased four times in “New Pakistan” vis-a-vis the united Pakistan.

In the case of smaller units, there will be no increase in the bureaucratic set-up expenditure-wise; rather it will be reduced as elected members will not be travelling long distances and will not be staying at expensive hotels. The divisional secretariat will be named as provincial secretariat with not more than five ministers or so for a bigger state/province and even less for smaller ones.

There will be only one elected governor and no chief minister nor his secretariat as is the case in the US. The MPAs of the division shall form a smaller assembly of the province. Still better would it be if the elected governor selected his cabinet ministers/secretaries from the lot of professionals/experts available in the province/state. This will stop horse-trading.

The writer is a former MNA.