Implementing the 18th Amendment,Taking the lead
Fouzia Saeed
Raza Rabbani stands behind the 18th Amendment but where is everybody else? Provincial chief ministers and chief secretaries should prepare to adopt new roles.
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The intrigues are brewing up in all circles, senior officials want to hang on to power, personal connections are being used to save jobs, and screams are heard every time a meeting is held to figure out the fate of a ministry.
Now is the time for the provinces to shift gears and move away from a grievance mode to a performance mode. The provincial leadership needs to show to their people that this challenge will be met.
Ministries are being transferred to the provinces one by one, but we don’t see the people dancing in the streets. While bureaucrats are manoeuvring to save their jobs and the comforts of Islamabad, why are the provincial political parties are not mobilising? While politicians who did not make it into the smaller cabinet are criticising the 18th Amendment, why are the senior leaders of the ruling parties not blocking the sabotage attempts? While the media is joining in to save the jobs of influential bureaucrats, why aren’t the people of the provinces defending what they got after a decades-long struggle?
The devolution of power to the provinces and the abolition of the concurrent list was a major part of the 18th Constitutional Amendment. Civil society, provincial political parties, nationalist groups, provincial governments and most importantly the people of the provinces had been asking for provincial autonomy. Everyone had pinned their hopes on Senator Mian Raza Rabbani as he led the Parliamentary Committee on Constitutional Reforms. The outcome of a long tedious and well managed process was hailed by all the political parties. The consensus was unprecedented. The law was passed smoothly by the parliament. Minor problems with the judiciary were sorted out.
But the process of implementation of the 18th Amendment, especially the devolution of the major portfolios to the provinces, has not seen the same kind of support from the major political parties. It is as if the ball has been thrown into the bureaucratic arena and the political leadership has gone on a vacation. A pattern we have seen so often.
The dynamics of this process have been quite entertaining, especially for the residents of Islamabad. The intrigues are brewing up in all circles, senior officials want to hang on to power, personal connections are being used to save jobs, and screams are heard every time a meeting is held to figure out the fate of a ministry.
Such minor issues as a promotion due one month after the ministry’s devolvement are being blown up in an attempt to prove that the new system will not work. The favourite word in Islamabad these days is confusion – coined to undermine the historic initiative. The word is catching on in the provinces too. It is being ensured that any hurdles that can be thought of are used to slow down the process. Many are praying for an early election, before the ministries are devolved, or for a messiah to take charge and reverse the process.
But while the bureaucracy makes all that noise, the supporters of the 18th Amendment are nowhere to be seen. Where did all those people go? Was provincial autonomy only a slogan to channel people’s anger against the federation? If not, we should see strong visible support for the process, and an active debate in the provinces on how to take charge and welcome all the new responsibilities. There should be an enthusiasm to prove that the provinces can govern their people better. The chief ministers and chief secretaries should be talking to the political and bureaucratic leadership to prepare them to take on new roles.
The media, which had criticised the government for the size of the federal cabinet and the strong hold of the federation over the provinces, are now supporting intrigues and scandals being manufactured to save jobs of the bureaucratic elite in Islamabad. The intention might only be to continuously criticise the government – which in their minds is ‘accountability’ – but major achievements of this nation are being undermined and the media are becoming a party to it, intentionally or unintentionally.
For example, in the case of the HEC, the media did not look at the merits and demerits of the devolution, or on the process by which the provinces should build the capacity to take care of the universities, but connected the issue to the validation of the degrees of parliamentarians. HEC’s mobilisation of students and teachers of universities, and rallies supported by educational institutions, are being shown as genuine protests by the usually very sceptical media.
The Ministry of Women’s Development mobilised development donors and some NGOs to argue that devolving the ministry is an anti-women measure and will undermine all progress made so far. Women’s rights activists and gender specialists opposed that, saying women’s issues should also go to the provinces because they are not isolated. These issues should be gender-mainstreamed in every ministry and at all levels, they said, and the Ministry of Women’s Development should have used the one-year transition period to work closely with the provinces rather than sitting in denial.
In a situation where most of the provincial political leaders seem to have gone on a break and the people are indifferent, how strong will Senator Raza Rabbani hold? So far it seems his own weight has been enough to move the process forward. Living in Islamabad, one hears a lot of grumbles from within his own party where people are unhappy because of personal losses linked to the process, but one can see that he must have had some assurance from the senior leadership that he is not backing off. Not all constitutional provisions have been implemented, after all.
Now is the time for the provinces to shift gears and move away from a grievance mode to a performance mode. The provincial leadership needs to show to their people that this challenge will be met. They have the systems and the portfolios are not new. Their capacities might be low, but in certain areas that was the case with the federal ministries too. The provinces need to reach out to intellectuals and those with skills and talent should come forward and help out. After all those mistakes, bad policies, corruption and militancy, Pakistan deserves to see this one good thing. It will change the course of our political history.
