Opening up the system

Published June 26, 2016
The writer is a member of staff.
The writer is a member of staff.

NOW that they’ve had theirs, folk are remembering that we’ve had ours. And then there’s the big one that’s still to be held — in Kashmir.

Plebiscite. Referendum. The people’s vote. Call it what you will.

Bad experiences aside, there may well be a reason to hold them here — not all referendums have to be about dictators trying to hang on by asking a funny question.

Where could we have one? Right where it’s blindingly obvious: in KP-Fata.

The powers-that-be appear to have decided that Fata has to be merged into Fata. Sensible reasons have been mooted, but, predictably, the unsavoury bits have been left unsaid.

Why not Fata as its own province? Because, apparently, you can’t trust them to not get funny ideas down the road. Imagine Fata the province wanting to secede. Or worse, join Afghanistan.

Instead of one Balochistan, we’d have two. So best not to meddle with that.

But then there’s also the other side: there’s a bunch of folk in KP who aren’t too excited about adding a chunk of Pakhtun lands and Pakhtun folk.


It’s not about being fashionable. Referendums can be dangerous precisely because they are so powerful — and simple.


Rumour, persistent rumour, has it that the last governor of KP wouldn’t accept the idea that KP should absorb Fata. Because that would mean relegating the non-Pakhtun lot in KP into a yet smaller minority. As you can imagine, the non-Pakhtun lot aren’t too excited about the possibility.

But all of that must be overruled because — well, referendums aren’t the Pakistani way. At least not the democratic way.

Why not though?

Hey, people of Fata, what would you like? And, hey, people of KP, would you like to welcome the people of Fata?

What’s so undemocratic about any of that?

Or, more relevantly, what’s so democratic about the proposed KP-Fata merger?

It’s not like referendums require special majorities or unanimity. And we already had a kind-of-referendum in the last election, in south Punjab.

A desperate PPP latched on to a Seraiki province as its best chance to hang on in the region.

If the PPP had swept south Punjab in 2013 and cobbled a majority in Islamabad, a south Punjab province would have been very much a part of the national conversation.

But the kind-of-referendum swung the other way, with south Punjab electing PML-N in greater numbers than the PPP or the PTI.

Gone, effectively, was the possibility of south Punjab forcing change against the wishes of Lahore. The kind-of-referendum worked.

It’s not about being fashionable. Referendums can be dangerous precisely because they are so powerful — and simple.

But the democracy deficit in Pakistan needs something to be unleashed to counter elite capture.

Think of it this way. The 18th Amendment was a historic transfer of power from the centre to the provinces. Done by the elected representatives of the people.

But quickly we found that the elected representatives were really doing themselves a favour — they like power concentrated in the provinces because they understand the provinces best.

Now imagine if the 18th Amendment had been taken to the people. A simple question: should parliament endorse the 18th Amendment or not?

That vast amendment, touching a hundred-odd clauses of the Constitution, was never going to be understood by everyone.

But a yes/no referendum could have forced open the conversation and, in doing so, blunted some of the less-desirable aspects of the amendment.

Take the new local government systems, left to the provinces to draw up under the 18th.

Today, either the LG structures themselves are flawed or implementation has been rubbish or both — and all of it was entirely predictable.

Had there been a referendum, the political parties seeking the people’s vote may have had to suggest something more substantive than the one-sentence Article 140A:

“Each Province shall, by law, establish a local government system and devolve political, administrative and financial responsibility and authority to the elected representatives of the local governments.”

At the very least, a referendum could have forced populist promises that political parties would have been forced to abide by on local government matters.

Either way, it’s difficult to imagine a referendum producing a worse outcome on the local government front. Or take parliament itself, reduced to a fate worse than pantomime.

Nawaz is famously uninterested and parliament is more or less OK with that. But few talk about why — Article 63A, the defection clause.

To elect a prime minister, to pass the federal budget and to pass a constitutional amendment — on none of that can an MNA vote against his party direction, or even abstain from voting.

The defection clause exists to cure a previous problem: horse-trading and the making and breaking of governments. But the solution has become progressively worse than the problem.

If you’re Nawaz or Imran or whoever and you can get yourself elected PM, get your budget passed and change whatever you like in the Constitution, why the hell would you pay attention to what your MNAs think?

And why then should MNAs care about whatever is going on in parliament?

Bizarrely, the architects of the 18th strengthened the defection clause by prohibiting MNAs from voting against party lines on constitutional amendments.

(Think back to Raza Rabbani tearing up over his vote for the 21st and remind yourself that he stewarded the 18th.)

A referendum could have maybe fixed some of that. Or forced some other good elsewhere.

But, no, we’re told referendums aren’t the Pakistani way. Because we have elected representatives to make decisions for us.

Just don’t ask too much about what those decisions are.

The writer is a member of staff.

cyril.a@gmail.com

Twitter: @cyalm

Published in Dawn, June 26th, 2016

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