Small provinces, bigger grievances

The general elections, though a democratic transition from one political administration to another, have always brought about political upheavals in our land since 1970. We painfully witnessed the loss of our eastern wing post-1970 election, the imposition of Martial Law in 1977, a political game of musical chairs from 1988 to October 1998, and unending political turmoil from 2013 to this day.

In the meantime, we saw the judicial murder of an elected prime minister, the tragic assassination of a two-time prime minister from Sindh, and the disqualification of two elected prime ministers from Punjab. This has utterly shattered the public confidence in elections, which owes a great deal to the bare-faced extra-constitutional meddling in the electoral process by powerful state institutions.

The current situation is rapidly drifting to a climax fraught with profound consequences. The stark interference in the Election Commission of Pakistan’s conduct of elections and post-election processes by way of enacting laws specific to one political party, amending electoral laws retrospectively and attempting to bulldoze constitutional amendments to bring about fundamental structural changes in the judiciary, drastically curtailing its powers as the third state organ in an arrogant disregard of the constitutional trichotomy of power would inflict a fatal blow to the wobbling federal structure eroding the effectiveness of the Constitution as the social contract between the federation and federal unit.

We could not afford such political and constitutional adventures when Balochistan is teetering under a seething insurgency; KPK faces intense resentment in the former tribal agencies arising out of their arbitrary merger in the mainland and being compounded by an intensifying religious militancy and insurgency and an immediate no-holds-barred confrontation between the provincial administration and the federal government; the growing anger and anguish of the people of Sindh over the appropriation of their hydrocarbon resources, urban and rural lands for housing schemes and corporate farming and the pilferage of their share of irrigation waters and purported changes in the National Finance Commission (NFC).

Our misplaced priority for a strong centre has always put the country’s federal structure at greater risk. For a quarter of a century, the federal structure was hamstrung by conflicts between the country’s eastern and western wings over the division of financial resources and political and administrative positions. After the secession of East Pakistan, we continued to have rancor among the four federating units of the country owing to the same financial, political and administrative fault lines. The provincial autonomy allowed by the 1973 Constitution was circumvented by political, administrative and legal manipulations by the powerful state institutions. This has continued unabated, notwithstanding the increased quantum of provincial autonomy provided in the 18th Amendment.

Punjab has been the proverbial elephant in the room. It has all the political and administrative levers to dominate the federal structure by its larger population, the overwhelming majority in the state institutions, including the National Assembly, the federal cabinet, judiciary, the armed forces and civil bureaucracy, public sector enterprises, and corporations. The province’s dominant position in the state institutions proportionate to its population seems intractable because of a chronic lack of political will, fairness and transparency on the part of its political and bureaucratic leadership to implement the constitutional clauses, particularly Article 158, to maintain political, economic, financial, and administrative equilibrium among the federating units.

Punjab, including the three constituencies of the federal capital, has 176 representatives in the National Assembly. In contrast, the other federal constituents – Sindh, KP and Balochistan – have only 150 Members of the National Assembly. This means that any political party sweeping the Punjab can form the federal government with the most negligible dependence on any other province’s support. In any national referendum, Punjab will carry the day. For this reason, two mainstream political parties based in Punjab – Pakistan Muslim League and Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf – have paid very little attention to other provinces.

All over the world, the federations respect the constitutionally defined autonomy of their federating states and recognize them as the sovereign owners of the hydrocarbon, marine and land mineral resources found within their boundaries. To safeguard their rights, the upper Houses, with equal representation from the federal units, have been made more powerful than the lower Houses. The federal governments exercise jurisdiction over a limited number of subjects that normally include defence, foreign and security policy, foreign trade, Federal Reserve Bank and currency. These federations successfully withstand vicissitudes of political and economic differences. Where such institutional checks and balances are weak or non-existent, conflicts of a serious nature, including violent campaigns for secession, have invariably arisen.

Measured by this yardstick, we have a politically, financially and administratively lopsided federal structure, which even the 1973 Constitution did not correct. In Quaid’s Pakistan, we devised the formula of the division of financial resources based on territory, introducing, as a condescending act, ‘Parity,’ disregarding the bigger population of East Pakistan. After the loss of East Pakistan, the framers of the 1973 Constitution reverted to the population as the fundamental basis for the division of the central pool of financial resources. To a greater extent, this situation was corrected by the 7th NFC Award in July 2010. This NFC Award stipulated that the financial share of federating units would be increased instead of being reduced in future NFCs. For this reason, the powerful quarters have stalled the Award of the 8th NFC Award since 2015. Unfortunately, there are now audible murmurs about changing the unanimous formula of the NFC Award.

Article 158 of the 1973 Constitution gives the first right to the federal constituents over their marine and land resources, including mines, minerals, coal, oil and gas etc., discovered or produced within their boundaries. The historical record of the powerful federal governments’ exploitative management of such provincial resources paints a dismal picture in Sindh, Balochistan and KPK. The hydel and wind power stations and deposits of coal, gas and oil, gold, copper, rare earth metal (REM) and other precious minerals are located in Balochistan, Sindh and KPK.

Historically, these provinces have had very little say in exploring and exploiting these resources. Balochistan has been producing massive coal and natural gas since the 1950s. The contracts of its known large gold, copper and REM mines in Saindak and Reko Diq have fetched billions of dollars to the Federation without any financial benefit to the province.

Federal governments established Sui Southern and Sui Northern Corporations with thousands of high-salaried positions and little representation from Balochistan. Sindh, too, produces the second-largest quantity of natural gas and oil. The gas is taken in the national pool and resold to the owner provinces. A similar practice is followed in the case of hydel and wind power produced in Sindh and KPK. The latter always complains about the little quantum of the royalty paid to it.

Sindh has the largest lignite coal mines. The federal government imports coal for its few power stations at the exorbitant rate of Rs.70,000 per tonne, whereas the lignite coal produced from Tharparkar—Sindh is priced at Rs.2700. Royalties to the province are ridiculously calculated at this rate. Two 600-megawatt power stations run on this coal in Tharparkar. The power is taken through Matiari transmission lines to the national grid and resold to Sindh. What is more ironic is that Balochistan and Sindh have a coastline of 990 kilometers, and the seaports located within their boundaries continue to be treated as a federal subject, with all the economic benefits accruing to the federal government. According to economist Kaiser Bengali, China owns 90% of the shares of Gwadar Seaport. Ironically, Balochistan has had no say in the contract.

This unfair and non-transparent distribution of economic and financial resources has afflicted the federal structure since the country’s inception. This needs to be corrected instead of making administrative and political changes in the territories of the federating units and opening floodgates that could shake the foundations of the federation. Punjab has become politically unwieldy, and its dominance in the powerful state institutions needs to be drastically reduced. The South Punjab province could be carved out of it after seeking the mandate of the people of the Saraiki-speaking districts through a referendum. This would not bring about any political and administrative upheaval as in the case of Sindh.

Sindh sans Karachi and Hyderabad would be a headless torso that is unsustainable politically and economically. Dividing the province would exacerbate the undercurrents of ethnic and linguistic tensions running underneath the surface, unleashing bloody conflicts and leading to massive population displacement, as was witnessed after the enactment of the Sindhi Language Bill of July 1972. The Baloch population would have no severe reservations if the Pashtun-speaking districts of the province desired to re-join KPK, as expressed in a national referendum. The unfair, unjust and non-transparent distribution of economic resources in derogation of the constitutional clauses weakens the federations. Unfortunately, we have not reckoned this reality for the past seven decades.