06.10.2013 Federalism and decentralisation
Against the backdrop of 18th Constitutional Amendment, the
recently held UNDP conference weighs the relevance and
implications of decentralisation
By Amjad Bhatti
The 18th Constitutional Amendment passed unanimously in April 2010 has sharpened the debates on federalism in Pakistan. A number of issues have emerged in the process of implementation and transition management in last three years where a plethora of diverse argumentation have pre-dominated the political and governance discourse in the country.
Some have argued that the 18th Amendment was “too little and too late”, while others have adjudged it as “too much and too soon”. The contest on the relevance, implications and implementation of the 18th Constitutional Amendment continues till today.
It was against this backdrop that UNDP’s project on “Strengthening Participatory Federalism and Decentralization” designed an international conference on “Participatory Federalism and Decentralization: From Framework to Functionality” on 25-27 September in Islamabad. The Conference was jointly organised and co-hosted by UNDP, Inter-University Consortium on the Promotion of Social Sciences, Ministry of Inter-Provincial Coordination, the Forum of Federations, the Higher Education Commission, and the National College of Arts.
The conference was aimed at studying different trends, levels, and indicators of institutional interplay between democracy, federalism and decentralisation at national, regional and global levels. Global and regional case studies were presented on the subjects, which provided a technical baseline to inform and facilitate the process of triangular integration between democracy, federalism and decentralisation in Pakistan.
Thirty papers were presented in the conference out of which 13 papers covered international case studies by foreign scholars while 17 papers were presented by the local academia, experts and government representatives from all four provinces. International representation comprised Ethiopia, Canada, Australia, Sri Lanka, India, Afghanistan, Indonesia, Nepal, USA, Russia and Germany.
Besides, political leadership from different parties was invited to provide participants an opportunity to understand divergent perspectives and ideological standpoints of different political dispositions in Pakistan. Prominent among them were Senator Mian Raza Rabbani, Maulana Fzalur Rehman, Mahmood Khan Achakzai, Shafqat Mehmood, Marvi Memon, Taj Haider, Danyal Aziz, Qamar Zaman Kaira and Farhatullah Babar.
Key messages of the Conference:
Pakistan being a society blessed with the richness of diversity and multiplicity reached a landmark consensus on federalism through a journey of continuous democratic struggle in last six decades.
The 18th Constitutional Amendment has set new directions for Pakistan as a federal, democratic and parliamentary state – and this has rightly been taken as a point of celebration for the proponents of federalism throughout the world.
Pakistan is in a state where it can learn and teach at the same time. It can learn in this formative phase of devolution management from the countries who have extensive experience of working within federal and decentralised frameworks of governance.
Pakistan can offer its learning to other countries as how consensus can be forged in diverse societies by relying upon the instruments of democratic decisions making. Pakistan has demonstrated its capacity to coin innovations in the structures of governance with a sense of inclusiveness, pluralism and equity.
Subsequently, the incorporation of the values of federalism, decentralisation and inclusiveness can further be facilitated by developing comprehensive institutional frameworks at different levels of the decision-making.
Streamlining of intergovernmental fiscal relations in some countries was not followed by true political decentralisation. This has led to a wider conclusion that fiscal federalism may survive without the political decentralisation only for a limited period of time.
Countries where local government systems have democratised state have also seen major innovations in governance and service delivery. Local governments increase the ability of voters to hold local decision makers accountable and it also strengthens the quality of national democratic leadership. It also broadens the bases of political leadership.
Local government systems need a substantial amount of hard power in order to exercise soft power. You can’t win with the losing hand. This is the fatal flaw in the community governance vision.
Decentralisation is also usually part of the ongoing power struggles between central and regional political leaders. Conflicts between modernising central governments and traditional regional authorities may limit the potential for positive outcomes for women.
The legislation on local government in Pakistan must ensure the compliance of Article 140 by devolving the political, fiscal and administrative authorities to the elected representatives of the local governments. The current legislations on the local government in four provinces do not reflect substantially the intent of the Article 140-A.
The 18th Constitutional Amendment was the beginning of the transfer of power from federal government to the provincial governments, now it is the turn of the provinces to keep in line with the constitutional commands and transfer powers to the lowest tiers of the governance for an effective service delivery and representative governments at the grassroots level.
Some governments implement electoral quotas that can compensate for women’s marginalisation by increasing their representation as legislators.
There have been areas of unclear relationship with federal legislation and the Election Commission of Pakistan which underpinned unclear legislation with significant gaps. There has been number of areas left for regulations to be written by civil servants.
Instead of the Rules of Business of the Federal Government, the rules of Council of Common Interests apply to the National Economic Council. In the view of 18th Constitutional Amendment, the Chairman of the Planning Commission should be appointed by the CCI on rotation basis to represent the Federation. Currently, CCI is not being involved in planning as required by the 18th Constitutional Amendment.
Introducing fiscal federalism, the 7th NFC Award has ushered a sense of autonomy in the federating units and is, therefore, a landmark achievement of a democratically elected government.
The implementation of Article 172 dealing with the joint ownership of natural resources can sufficiently bridge the economic disparities and reduce poverty with indigenous resources in Pakistan.
The Article 10-A introduced by the 18th Constitutional Amendment provides for a comprehensive review of justice system in Pakistan and it necessitates judicial reforms, cleansing the justice administration from colonial codifications hampering access to justice and fair trail.
Article 19-A of the Constitution set benchmark for the transparency and accountability by making right to information a fundamental right. The current legislations on right to information have emerged as disabler rather than enabler laws in the country.
Three nonlinear steps to march towards the course of reconciliation in Balochistan were suggested which include: (a) establishment of Balochistan Truth Commission; (b) redistributive justice as the equalisation of property and wealth ownership by direct political fiat and (c) incorporation of consociational elements into federal design.
A continuous process of dialogue and knowledge exchange between provinces would enable more informed transition management of 18th Constitutional Amendment in Pakistan.
The newly-reinvigorated institution of Council of Common Interests need to be strengthened and as commanded by the Constitution of Pakistan a separate secretariat for the CCI needs to be established which should be providing required data, information and evidence to the CCI on the subjects assigned to it through Federal Legislative List Part II.
Ministries established at the federal level on the subjects devolved to the provinces should be abolished with immediate effect as this has been taken as violation of the provincial autonomy and the demarcation of powers between centre and the provinces.
It was also noted that the reversal of 18th Constitutional Amendment with special reference to those Articles which deal with the parliamentary system of government and provincial autonomy will create political instability in Pakistan.
The conference underlined the need for creating more spaces of mutual learning between political leadership, development partners and academia to deepen the understanding of political, legislative, administrative and fiscal dimensions of federalism. The required technical knowledge base would inform the process of decision-making for a coordinated implementation of massive devolution.