Monday, February 18, 2019

Business Recorder Editorial Feb 18, 2019

Hazara province bill

Two weeks after moving a bill to carve out two new provinces out of Punjab, the opposition Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) has now submitted another bill to create a Hazara province out of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP). As justification for this latest move, the PML-N cites the resolution passed by the KP Assembly on March 25, 2014 for creation of a Hazara province. It says the resolution was supported by both sides of the Assembly’s aisle. The proposal therefore, according to the PML-N, seeks to meet the “very genuine demand” of the people of Hazara Division to create a province comprising the areas of the division. The bill seeks amendments to three Articles of the Constitution, Articles 51 (formation of the National Assembly), 59 (related to the structure of the Senate) and 106 (constitution of the provincial Assemblies). The amendment sought in Article 51 wants the table of provinces therein to include Hazara province with 11 general seats and three women’s reserved seats. Clause 3A of Article 51 is to be replaced with: “Notwithstanding anything contained in Clause 3 or any other law for the time being in force, the women members elected from KP and Punjab shall continue till dissolution of the National Assembly and thereafter this clause shall stand omitted.” On Article 59, the bill seeks a revision of the total strength of the Senate from the present 96 to 142. The bill argues: “Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa prior to the creation of the new Provinces of Hazara, Bahawalpur and Janubi (south) Punjab shall complete their respective terms of office and thereafter this clause shall be omitted.” Here the movers of the bill have joined their latest new province demand with their earlier one for two new provinces in Punjab. As far as Article 106 is concerned, the bill suggests that its table too include Hazara and allot the new province 29 general seats, six women’s seats and one minority seat, making a total of 36 seats in the new Hazara provincial Assembly.

What lies behind this cascading series of PML-N demands for new provinces, and that too in the two provinces currently ruled by the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaaf (PTI)? After all, if the Hazara province question is examined, the PML-N was in power when the KP Assembly resolution regarding this issue was passed. In fact, during their five-year tenure in power from 2013 to 2018, the PML-N never paid any attention to the issue of creation of new provinces anywhere and consigned the Hazara province demand to cold storage. Even now, the target of the PML-N being the two provinces ruled by the PTI arouses suspicions that there is more to the move than meets the eye at first glance. Why, for example, does the PML-N ‘drive’ for new provinces ignore the demands for an Urdu-speaking new province to be carved out of Sindh or a Pashtun province out of Balochistan? The underlying motivation of the PML-N, now in opposition and under the cosh from the ruling PTI, National Accountability Bureau (NAB) and the judiciary for alleged corruption, appears to be to muddy the waters for the PTI and embarrass it for not fulfilling its campaign pledge to create a new province in southern Punjab and ignoring since 2014 the demand passed by the KP Assembly while PTI was in power in the province. Is it credible that the PML-N has suddenly suffered pangs of conscience and a bleeding heart for the citizens of southern Punjab and Hazara after blithely ignoring these issues while in power in Punjab and the Centre? The suspicion therefore that this is not much more than a plan by the PML-N to create difficulties for the PTI is hard to resist. New provinces cannot by any stretch of the imagination be created out of a motivation rooted in political rivalry. Merely posing the question of why PML-N is ignoring the new province demands in Sindh and Balochistan not only deepens this suspicion, it fails to address the elephant in the room: the necessary lack of consensus on the creation of new provinces per se.

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