October 4, 2002	Friday	Rajab 26, 1423

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ISLAMABAD, Oct 3: An unusual row between the president and prime minister of Azad Kashmir over the use of their powers has cooled off after perceived intervention by Pakistani authorities, but is not over as both men are sticking to their guns.

But political sources said the row, which had simmered for several months and burst into the open only last week over the appointment of some government functionaries, could turn ugly if the territory’s present constitutional arrangement was disturbed.

President Sardar Mohammad Anwar and Prime Minister Sardar Sikandar Hayat, accuse each other of interfering in the other’s domain and have different ways in mind to resolve the matter.

The dispute between the territory’s two top functionaries has erupted at a time when Pakistan’s military government is involved in holding general elections and both Pakistan and Azad Kashmir are protesting against controversial polls in Indian-held Kashmir.

Sardar Hayat says Sardar Anwar tried to encroach upon the prime ministerial powers given by the territory’s constitution and has challenged him to go to court if he finds any fault with the appointment of a new ombudsman and at least two Public Service Commission members.

But Sardar Anwar, who says the appointments made in his absence by the acting president were against the spirit of the constitution, wants the matter resolved by undoing these actions and mutual consultations.

Both men have separately met Pakistani authorities — including President Pervez Musharraf and some senior officials in the army hierarchy — in apparent moves to explain their cases against each other.

Sardar Sikandar told Dawn he would not part with powers given to him by the territory’s constitution and that the Pakistani authorities had advised him and the president to remain within their own spheres and refrain from going public to air their differences.

But President Anwar said he had received no advice to end what he thought he had not started.

“Nobody has advised me to do that,” he told Dawn when asked in an interview if there was a Pakistani advice to end the row.

“Nobody likes this kind of a thing,” he said, adding: “But it is not my fault.”

Bitter political rows between rivals are not new to Azad Kashmir and have occasionally become nasty as when a police action ended a so-called “parallel government” in the territory in the 1950s. Paramilitary forces were sent from Pakistan in the 1970s to help depose the then President Sardar Abdul Qayyum Khan. Years later, General Mohammad Ziaul Haq sacked a Pakistan People’s Party government of the territory after he toppled Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali in the 1977 coup.

But the latest row was different in nature — between members of the same ruling All Jammu and Kashmir Muslim Conference (AJKMC) party, though the president is a new entrant to politics and the prime minister a veteran who has been in and out of the government for decades.

The AJKMC elected Sardar Anwar president a year ago within days of his retirement from the army, after the party’s veteran leader Sardar Qayyum hesitated to take the figurehead presidency instead of the prime ministership.

For Sardar Anwar’s election, the AJKMC government, amended by decree a law prohibiting government officials from taking an elective office within two years of their retirement, probably to regret later.

Sardar Sikandar said he was the territory’s chief executive and the president only “the nominal head” under the 1974 Act, which provided for a parliamentary system of government and “reflects the spirit of the constitution of 1973 in Pakistan”.

Though in Pakistan, the constitution was amended by Gen Zia to give the president powers to sack the prime minister and dissolve parliament, the same was not done in Azad Kashmir though he installed Brigadier Mohammad Khan Hayat Khan — later promoted to major-general — as the territory’s chief executive who continued until 1985.

Sardar Hayat cited completion of his previous 1985-90 tenure as prime minister and those of his party leader Sardar Abdul Qayyum Khan and PPP’s Sultan Mahmood Chaudhry even with unfavourable central governments in Pakistan and said: “So in Azad Kashmir we can say that this system is working successfully from 1985 till today.”

He said it was untrue that he had encroached upon the president’s powers. “The true spirit is that anything which the president has to do requires the recommendation of the prime minister,” he said citing a Supreme Court decision and the 1974 Act that says that binds the president to act on the prime minister’s advice.

Sardar Anwar agrees with that, but says, the prime minister acted against the spirit of the constitution by making the latest appointments that he called “interference...in the departments directly under the president”.

He questioned how an ombudsman or public service commission members, appointed by the prime minister, could be independent of the executive, and said hurry, shown in the matter when he was on a visit to the United States, made the appointments malafide.

“What was the emergency, what was the hurry,” he asked about the appointments made by the Legislative Assembly speaker Sardar Siab Khan as acting president on the prime minister’s advice. “So, when he appoints, I consider this is malafide and it is not in keeping with the spirit of the constitution.”

Sardar Hayat said the advice for the appointments to the acting president, because of the past experience, of what he called long delays, made by the president in acting, on his advice.

But the president said this delay was caused by the absence of comments sought from the prime minister.

He said he favoured checks and balances in the working of the government, but he was unaware of any plan to change the territory’s constitutional arrangement.

Sardar Hayat said that even before the controversy about the appointments, “there was an attempt from the president” to take a share in executive authority that he said could be done only by amending the constitution.

“Without that we cannot do it. If at all I... have to share the responsibility or authority I will be looking to the constitution. I cannot share it and like that the president cannot share his powers without the amendment in the constitution. The only way is that we should abide by the constitution.”