Pakistan, Politics, Sindh, Sindhi

Empower provinces and eliminate the menace of over-centralization in Pakistan

1 Comment

Ownership of Oil and Gas Resources of Sindh
by Khalid Hashmani, McLean, Virginia, USA
I support any and all initiatives and actions that empower provinces and eliminate the menace of over-centralization in Pakistan. The current constitution gives too much power to one province to control the other three smaller provinces.
In addition to what is being proposed, it will be great if the Pakistani constitution is amended to make the Pakistani Senate a truly empowered institution in the same way as the US Senate. This would entail equal representation to four provinces and elimination of special representation from Islamabad and FATA areas. The Pakistani Senate should be empowered to initiate monetary bills that it cannot currently do.

I will give equally warmly welcome any announcements from PPP and/or PML-N supporting provincial autonomy and elimination of the concurrent list.

If the provincial autonomy is ever restored, not only Pakistan would come closer to its original vision enshrined in the 1940 resolution but would become much stronger and a unified country. Without provincial autonomy, in my view, the future does not look very promising for Pakistan.

One thought on “Empower provinces and eliminate the menace of over-centralization in Pakistan”

  1. No doubt the provincial autonomy was promised in 1973 constitution and it will make smaller provinces economically independent, considering our bureaucratic setup i have some doubt whether its benefit will pass on to common people.
    For instance Punjab has been enjoying in getting 64% of the revenue against only 13% to 17% it gives to national exchequer, the myseries of common man in that province is not much different than that of other provinces only the bureaucracy got flourished and they are causing all sorts of hindrances in implementing the provincial autonomy.
    Common people sense of sharing on federal level is through elections where their say is directly involve in making Gov’t.
    With our current seat allocation in national assembly, this sense of sharing power of smaller provinces can not be achieved, even if three provinces unitedly give votes to one party and the Punjab alone go for other party the will of the smaller provinces and thier mandate can not form their gov’t of choice.(may lead to “idhar hum udhar tum”)
    For the sake of the integrity of the country it is time to restore those areas with some addition of new territories which were not part of Punjab province uptill 1955 as a separate province, this will cut down the decisive majority of Punjab, the national assembly which is just a federal assembly will become a real Federal assembly of Pakistan
    Best of regards
    Ameed Khan
    Canada

    Reply

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