Business Recorder April 3, 2018

The Bajwa doctrine

Major General Asif Ghafoor, head of ISPR, held a press conference the other day to clear up what the military felt were some misconceptions regarding the recent interaction of COAS General Qamar Javed Bajwa with a select group of journalists. The need for the clarificatory press conference was felt because some of the group of select journalists wrote and spoke about various aspects of what was dubbed the ‘Bajwa doctrine’. Major General Ghafoor was at pains to emophasise that insofar any such creature as the Bajwa doctrine existed, it was only a concept related to security and had nothing to do with politics, the judiciary or the 18^th Amendment. The last named in particular became a talking point and engendered a controversy about the reversal of the 18^th Amendment because of the flaws and weaknesses thrown up since its promulgation in 2010. The ISPR chief underlined that in the COAS’s view, not all the 18^th Amendment was bad, nor had he spoken against the Amendment as a whole. It may be recalled that some reports after the COAS’s select interaction with some journalists said the army chief considers the 18^th Amendment as damaging if not more than the famous six points of Sheikh Mujibur Rehman. That impression or misconception has now been firmly rejected by the ISPR chief.

It would be useful to recall that the 70-year history of Pakistan is replete with the struggle between the Centre and the provinces. Pakistan came into being with a majority of the populace in East Pakistan. The powers-that-be in the early years of the country’s existence were wary of adopting the democratic principle of one man one vote since this would translate in Pakistan’s peculiar physiognomy as a permanent Bengali majority. To avoid or circumvent this ‘unacceptable’ reality, various schemes were mooted, all of which fed into the nine-year delay before a Constitution could be promulgated in 1956. That Constitution addressed the ‘fear’ of a permanent Bengali majority by creating One Unit out of the provinces constituting West Pakistan and introduced the concept of ‘parity’ between the two wings. This had the consequence of depreciating the vote of a citizen from East Pakistan since both wings now had an equal number of seats in the National Assembly. Arguably, this was one of the issues that fed into discontent and the eventual parting of the ways of East Pakistan. One Unit in West Pakistan too was the source of much conflict, including armed insurgencies, particularly in the three smaller erstwhile provinces/territories of Sindh, Balochistan and NWFP (now Khyber Pakhtunkhwa). It was only during the Yahya regime that One Unit and parity were finally done away with and the 1970 elections held on the basis of one man one vote. The horrific outcome post-1970 had nothing to do with any flaws in this new schema but everything to do with the Yahya military regime’s unwillingness to recognize the mandate arising out of the 1970 elections and the logical transfer of power to the victorious party, in this case the Awami League. As a result of these policies, half the country was lost. The remaining Pakistan continued to see conflicts (again, including armed insurgencies) between the Centre and the provinces, prompting the parliament elected in the 2008 elections to set up a constitutional reform committee that laboured over and finally produced the consensus 18^th Amendment. Although the Amendment consists of some 104 Articles (including changes), it is widely recognized as fulfilling if not all at least most of the provinces’ long standing demands for provincial autonomy, control over their own resources and political and financial empowerment, even if that meant a relative scaling down and weakening of the Centre. The argument was that provinces empowered thus would strengthen the federation. If there are flaws or weaknesses that have come to light in the wake of the promulgation of the 18^th Amendment, including the capacity of the provinces to manage the new and expanded scope of the subjects in their purview, this arguably is the case with our system of governance, including at the Centre, as a whole. Nor does this justify the view that the 18^th Amendment has weakened the federal government to the point where it finds itself hamstrung. The Centre still withholds funds owed to the provinces regarding their share of the natural resources in their territories. The anomalies and weaknesses in the provinces’ capacity is not an insurmountable problem and can be tackled along with similar tendencies at the Centre. But what cannot be contemplated, given the brief sketch of our historical experience above, is a reversal of the provincial autonomy and devolution of power to the provinces brought in by the 18^th Amendment.