IT IS an irony of Pakistan’s constitutional development that while the constant clamour has been for more powers to the provinces, it is the federal government that has grown stronger. A greater irony is that the centre has emerged stronger from the last military government’s devolution of power plan. Under the plan some responsibility has indeed devolved but no power.

The real power flows from the control of productive assets and taxes. That is increasingly exercised by the federation. After sales tax, octroi, too, which was the mainstay of the local councils, has been made a part of the federal revenues. The taxes levied and collected by the provincial and district governments (in which the municipalities now have merged) being inadequate even for their routine functions, they have to wait for the money to arrive from the centre to finance their development works. Reports are often heard of their employees going without pay for months together just because receipt from Islamabad is either not enough or is delayed.

The apportionment of taxes between the federation and the provinces and in turn the share of each province is decided at five-year intervals by a National Finance Commission. Under the 1997 NFC award still in force, the federation retains 62.5 per cent of the taxes collected and distributes the remainder 37.5 per cent among the provinces with Punjab getting 57.88 per cent, Sindh 23.28, the NWFP 13.54 and Balochistan 5.30. The population was the basis of the provincial allocation in 1997 award as it has been since 1951 when the first award was made.

The Sindh cabinet in its very first meeting, though termed introductory and informal, chose to contest this basis and forcefully put forward the argument for pegging the shares of the provinces to tax collection within their jurisdictions instead of population. Ministers Syed Sardar Ahmad and Aftab Sheikh are reported to have contended that this would raise the share of Sindh from the present 23.28 to 70 per cent. The ministers suggested that that is what Sindh should press for in the discussions now in progress for framing a new award for the next five years.

The basis for provincial shares in the divisible pool of taxes is too sensitive an issue for an off-the-cuff judgment by the ministers in their maiden appearance. The point they should have contemplated is whether the other three provinces would ever be content with the remaining 30 per cent once Sindh has taken 70 per cent for itself. In an urge to play to the gallery, they ignored this hard reality despite their grounding in law and administration.

Admittedly population alone is neither a complete nor a just basis for the distribution of tax proceeds between the provinces, but making their collection a sole basis would be worse still. The whole range of economic activity, wherever it takes place and generates taxes, has to be taken into account. The collection point is incidental to it. To quote just one example, the sales tax and excise duty of around Rs. 12 billion, which Pakistan Tobacco pays in a year, is owed to the smokers all over the country no matter where its factories and offices may be located.

Successive finance commissions have remained tethered to the population basis only because the provincial governments could not agree to a more diverse and equitable set of criteria. In the deliberations leading to the 1997 award, the then adviser to the prime minister, Shahid Javed Burki, who in turn was advised by Dr. Hafeez Pasha, drew a national resource picture in which the needs of the provinces, based on their past expenditures and future projections, were shown to have been more than met. The population factor thus seemed to lose its edge though it remained the basis.

However, the resource picture painted then turned out to be too rosy to be true. The transfer of taxes to the provinces consequently fell way short of the projection. The shortfall, perhaps, hurt Sindh more than the other provinces. Over five years it received 40 per cent less than was expected.

An assurance was held out at the deliberations that the promised funds would be given to the provinces even if the collection of taxes fell short of the projections. The brunt of the shortfall was to be borne by the federal government alone. It is the utter disregard of this assurance which, apparently, has made Sindh look and press for a basis more favourable to it than population. Yet it must be acceptable to the other three provinces for the award arises out of consensus alone. For obvious reasons no other province would ever agree to the collection of taxes being the sole basis of allocations.

Fifty per cent (not 70 per cent as has been assumed by the Sindh ministers) of the taxes are collected in Sindh. The percentages of collection in the other three are: 41 in Punjab, six in the NWFP and three in Balochistan. Under the formula Sindh proposes to press, the smaller two provinces would stand to lose much more than Punjab. Their allocation will become less than half of what it is now on the basis of population.

To be economically viable, and thus also politically autonomous, the provinces would do well to join hands to open a wider front in negotiations with the custodian of it all, the federal government. Aiming at financial autonomy, the provinces should ask for the transfer of taxes to them rather than quarrel over percentages in the pool. That is the essence of administrative independence and financial responsibility both. Ideally, it should be the transfer of sales tax to the provinces for collection at the points of sale. But that has its own complexities and the provinces have severe limitation of knowledge and experience and the ever-haunting spectre of corruption in administering it. It is for these very limitations, though less severe, that even the federal government has made it into a tax on production or import rather than sale.

The transfer of sales tax or any other tax on the federal list or the concurrent list to the provinces would need a constitutional amendment. Yet, while planning and striving for it, the provinces, meanwhile, should press for a share in the pool higher than the 37.5 per cent given under the current award. That should compel the federal government to cut its owing size and also spend less. There is ample scope for both. It might also be persuaded to disinvest the state enterprises running on subsidy and, more important, review the foreign policy, especially the tense relations with India which impose a burden in terms of defence spending disproportionate to the country’s resources.

A justification for a larger share for the provinces in the tax pool also otherwise exists because of the abolition of octroi and an increase in the rate and range of sales tax.

While the present system of distribution of tax receipts through the NFC lasts, its basis can be expanded to include, besides population, vastness of the area, higher incidence of rural poverty and extra expenditure required to control crime and enforce laws in urban squatter settlements. Every province would benefit by it in varying degrees, smaller in population the more so.

Whether money lies with the centre or comes down to the provinces, the general grievance will remain that it is wasted on unnecessary ever-expanding political and bureaucratic establishments rather than used for public welfare.

To check it, the expenditure of the governments — federal and provincial — on their own upkeep should be frozen at the present level for the next five years through a constitutional provision with an independent authority to enforce it. The new people appointed and the expenditures incurred may replace but not add to the existing number or amount.

SPEAKING at what was admittedly a political occasion the other day in Rawalpindi, Prime Minister Mir Zafarullah Jamali addressed a few words of advice (or was it a rebuke?) to the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal — the MMA.

Whatever it was, the message was clear without being loud. He told the MMA to stop parading as the sole custodian and monopolist of Islam. Most of us in Pakistan are Muslims. The MMA is only carrying coal to New Castle.

From the moment the result of the last general election was announced, the MMA has been talking too much, too loudly, very often menacingly. Its spokesmen are dilating on almost everything under the sun. These are subjects about which these madressah graduates hardly have a clue. A good deal of the rough and rash outpourings of the MMA big shots is their old concoction in the very same old bottles. The tedious refrain is to make Pakistanis more moral men and women.

Look at it from any angle, the MMA jargon’s implication, followed by its verdict, is that the people in Pakistan are short on morals, if not exactly immoral. Hence, the MMA is taking upon itself the mission to convert them, all over again, to Islam, fit and proper. The audacity of this kind of harangues apart, it amounts to something that is neither tolerable as a religious objective nor acceptable as decent politics.

Before it gets rather late, sane citizens should try to understand the incredible phenomenon of an MMA victory at the polls, though only in certain pockets of the country. Never in Pakistan’s 55-year history was the voter persuaded to vote mulla. Why this time? This is a pertinent question and one that must be addressed in all seriousness. What factor gave the preternatural vote to the mulla alliance this time?

Be it noted at the outset that none of the six in the MMA caboodle gave the electorate any programme of any kind. During their election orations, none of them ever mentioned any domestic issues although goodness knows the country is bristling with all manner of problems — illiteracy, crime, poverty, unemployment, political fragmentation, social deviations, poor health services, neglect of the disadvantaged and the needy, indeed so many more.

The mulla alliance did not find any of these worth a thought or sermon. They harped all along on a foreign theme — the United States, its indiscriminate and abjectly obedient support for Israel’s aggression in Palestine in particular, and its insensitive disregard for the sentiments of the Muslim peoples across the world. This sentiment was only reinforced by Washington’s single-minded pursuit of Iraq, although for most people in this country, the Iraqi president is largely Washington’s own creation.

It is noteworthy that the maulanas were until yesterday fighting as ‘Taliban’, alongside the US, to destroy the ‘evil” communist empire. Now they are keeping studiously silent about the US-led international coalition targeting the Taliban. Nor is there a word about the United States as the real founder and friend of the Taliban. The MMA has yet to say anything about Al Qaeda, about Osama bin Laden and what have you.

During the last election campaign the MMA trained all its guns on Washington’s war-like policies in the Middle East and Near East. It was easy enough to paint the US as an ‘enemy of Islam.’ Creating the vision of an ‘enemy of Islam’ has been the favourite weapon of the mulla down the ages. They see so many as ‘enemies of Islam’ in this Islamic republic. And they are bent upon Islamizing them, quite as Gen Zia Islamized Pakistan, courtesy the same clan of mullas.

This is the kind of psychological moment when the unthinking voter would be overwhelmed by inflamed sentiment and side with this kind of noise and religious fury. The extremists would find many takers in Pakistan. Here we come to a point when one must ask the question: Is it any different in George Bush’s United States? His scalding hot war rhetoric, too, won a substantial victory in recently held Senate elections. For their sheer lack of sober thought and clear-headed reason, these two phenomena — the MMA’s anti-US rhetoric and Bush’s anti-Iraq tirades — bear a family resemblance.

A very pertinent point that Prime Minister Jamali might have made, (and apparently preferred to save it for some other occasion) is about the chemistry of the MMA. All the six parties, now in alliance (or an opportunistic get-together?), are essentially Islamic parties by their own claims and contentions. They are all for Islam and dedicated uncompromisingly to enforce Islamic virtues, values, laws and all that.

This entity that goes under the label of MMA, is presenting itself as a Muttahida (united) formation of six not only distinct but also different ‘Islamic’ parties operating in the name of religion. The point that one must emphasize is that, as far as Islam is concerned, these six parties are most certainly not a Muttahida (united) organization. If they were united on Islam, they would not be six but one and only one. Severally, the six are, un-united, self-styled and, by their professed spiritual commitments, different ‘Islamic’ entities, more often than not feuding among themselves.

Now the obvious question is: If not united on Islam, what exactly are they Muttahid (united) on, or about, or for? Throughout the election campaign they demonstrated unity only on shouting red-hot anti-US slogans. These were the very Islamic parties that were fighting the United States’ war in Afghanistan to oust the Soviets. They fought on, despite the worst drought in Afghanistan’s history, and paved the way for the victory of the United Sates — not a victory of Islam.

With dismay, the average Pakistani now looks back on the rise of the Taliban. Then the torrid romance between the US and its self-created Taliban. The US raised the Taliban to the level of a determined fighting force, armed to the teeth with sophisticated weapons, provided without stint. This was as good canon fodder as ever was made in recorded history. The two then became not only comrades-in-arms but also battle bed-fellows.

The war was won by shooting from the shoulders of the Taliban. How genuine was the Mulla-US romance was unveiled as soon as the Soviets were trounced. The US abandoned Afghanistan in ruins and flames. The abrupt US withdrawal left the Taliban free to turn on and savage their own people. This was no concern of the great patron of democracy and freedoms. President Clinton abandoned Afghanistan in ruins and flames only to play ‘Holi’ in India.

Later, President Clinton kindly found time to treat Pakistan, the closest ally of the US in the Afghan campaign, to a wholly unsolicited homily. What one finds in Afghanistan could have been prevented had Clinton not been so unwise. Had his successor not been equally so, the United States might have been spared the trauma and humiliation of September 11 — and the world spared the looming horror of war.

The MMA election score and the consequent heartaches for Pakistan may be seen as a gift — with love from Washington.

AS January 27, the deadline for the submission of UN arms inspectors’ report on Iraq, approaches, fifty thousand US troops and marines have been sent to the Gulf region and 50,000 National Guards and reservists will be reaching there by February 15 to attack Iraq.

In addition, the US Fifth Command based in Germany has dispatched its troops to join the expeditionary force stationed in the Gulf. To make sure that Washington is going to war, a hospital ship was also sent to the Gulf. Kuwait hosts a US naval base while Qatar is being used as a staging post for an invasion.

Surprisingly, the French President Jacque Chirac, in a dramatic New Year message to the armed forces, ordered his troops to be ready for assault on Iraq along with the US but qualified his statement by making any possible French participation in the war conditional on a Security Council call for military action. The French president was trying to balance his anti-war policy by going half way along with his American counterpart in the Middle East adventure.

But more surprising was Tony Blair’s caution to George Bush that he had better look before he leaps lest he ends up isolating his country in the comity of nations. The British prime minister also warned George Bush of the ensuing polarization between the cross and the crescent should he ride roughshod over the feelings of the Muslim nations spread across three continents. Earlier, Moscow, too, opposed any unilateral strike against Baghdad because that would fuel militancy across the globe.

To dispatch forces some eleven thousand miles from the US territory and to continue to violate the Iraqi air space and bomb civilian and military sites in that country in the name of enforcement of no-fly zone restrictions are blatant acts of war. The UN arms inspectors have not so far unearthed any contraband weapons although they have searched 125 sites. George Bush is, however, not satisfied with their performance since they have not been carrying out their work with the aggressiveness wanted by the American leader. It must have been frustrating for Washington that both Hans Blix and IAEA chief Dr. Mohammad Al Baradei have not found any evidence of clandestine weapons of mass destruction programme despite promptings and proddings from American intelligence agencies.

In the wolf-and-lamb argument, George Bush may seize upon any opportunity to attack Iraq on the pretext that Hans Blix has observed that Iraq’s report leaves many unanswered questions. However, Iraq has offered to furnish any additional information sought by the UN arms monitors.

The international community is convinced that Iraq has gone the whole length in cooperating with the investigating team. Compared to this, imagine Israel’s reaction to a similar investigation. It possesses nuclear bombs and missiles in addition to conventional weapons. Under the Security Council resolution 687, these weapons must be destroyed in Israel as well. But the US has not even hinted at such a move. Nor have Russia, France and the People’s Republic of China insisted on such a course of action.

The selective application of the above resolution has exposed the designs of the Bush administration. It wants to seize Iraq’s rich oil fields on the one hand and break up Iraq into Arab, Kurd and Shia principalities on the other. This Balkanization may eventually lead to the fragmentation of Turkey and Iran where the ethnic Kurd minority may form a state of its own. After all, President Wilson in his 14 points had envisaged a Kurdish state but he failed to implement it because of the victory of Kamal Ataturk in mainland Turkey. If the American policymakers are contemplating any such move, they would be doing so to establish Israel’s over-lordship in the Middle East.

The open partisanship of the US towards Israel has damaged Washington’s credibility as the self-appointed broker in the Arab-Israeli conflict. People have been asking why the UN arms inspectors do not visit Israel to look into its atomic, biological and chemical arsenal. There is overwhelming evidence that Israel has been manufacturing nuclear and other lethal weapons.

The UN Security Council inspectors have been interrogating Iraq’s nuclear scientists and forcing them to leave Iraq, thus depriving that country of scientific expertise. On the other hand, no such inspection in Israel was ever made even after the revelation of its nuclear weapons programme by its defecting nuclear technician, Vanunu. He was kidnapped by Israeli agents and brought back and sentenced to imprisonment for high treason.

In marked contrast to Washington’s benign neglect of Israel’s nuclear programme, the western media raised the bogey of ‘Islamic Bomb’ during the seventies and indicted Pakistan’s top nuclear scientist. The witch-hunt of Pakistan’s nuclear scientists reached its limit during the US invasion of Afghanistan with the FBI interrogating nuclear scientists on trumped-up charges. Pakistan, supposedly a US ally in its war on terror, remains a suspect in the latter’s eyes and its nationals are subjected to discriminatory treatment.

A similar treatment is meted out to Saudi nationals visiting the US or residing there. All this has antagonized the Muslim peoples all over the world.

A US attack on Iraq will displace, according to a UN estimate, ten million people. Rather than dissuading George Bush from thrusting a war on that country, the UN relief agencies have been planning to set up refugee camps for tens of hundreds of displaced persons in the neighbouring countries and storing food and other necessities of life as if war is ordained. This is an abject surrender to aggression and not peace-making which is the primary responsibility of the world body.