Daily Times

On May 27, 2018 the Federally Administered Tribal Areas merged with Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP), creating history. The KP Assembly adopted the Constitutional amendment that made this all possible through a two-third majority, meaning the move was quite popular. However, not everyone was happy. There were protests against the move by Fazlur Rehman’s Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam-F (JUI-F) and the Pakhtunkhwa Milli Awami Party (PkMap). Overall, 87 lawmakers voted in favour of the bill, only seven voted against it.

The historic 31st Amendment Bill, also known as the FATA reforms bill, has already been passed by the National Assembly and the Senate with two third majorities, now awaiting the President’s stamp of approval.

FATA represents seven agencies – Bajaur, Dir, Khyber, Mohmand, Peiwar Kotal in Kurram Agency, the Bolan Pass and Gomal in South Waziristan.

The outgoing Safron Minister has informed that the government had allocated Rs100 billion for the development of FATA under the National Finance Commission (NFC) Award. He added that a law was being introduced to increase KP Assembly seats to absorb tribal areas in the province. Presently, FATA has twelve National Assembly seats, twice as many as the quota fixed for the entire country on the basis of population. As a result of the constitutional amendment, all seven districts of FATA have been merged into the KP province, with political agents replaced by an accompanying extension of the provincial and federal government’s power to deliver government services, including healthcare, education and policing.

Transition process is spread over two years, meanwhile, FATA Interim Governance Regulation, 2018 – a set of provisional rules with which to govern the tribal areas during the adjustment period will be approved by the President as the 31st Constitutional Amendment.

Only two FATA MNAs out of a total of nine voted in favour of the bill. This is contrary to the principles of democracy, where the minority vote of FATA parliamentarians held sway, riding roughshod over the other parliamentarians

Two questions arise, why have two political parties, the JUI-F and Pk Map made the merger a contentious issue and what are the benefits and detriments of this historic decision?

Firstly, all Pakistani laws, including criminal and penal codes, have been extended to the tribal districts, which used to be governed under the Frontier Crimes Regulations (FCR), a draconian British law that left citizens of the tribal areas with no recourse to courts and liable to be subjected to collective punishment for the crimes of their tribe members. Now that the FCR has been done away with and FATA has been merged with KP, the tribal people’s fundamental rights will be protected by the Constitution, and they will be able to vote for representatives in the provincial and national assemblies.

Although it took over a year to complete the debate, delaying the merger till the very end of the outgoing national and provincial assembles’ tenure has left some gaping holes. Was this deliberate or was it sheer inertia that delayed the process? Resultantly, the FATA Interim Governance Regulation, 2018 did not run the full gamut through the Parliament, leaving behind residual issues. FATA and KP residents will in all likelihood have to endure the agony of waiting till the next Parliament is in place to receive responses to a number of queries. These include the possibility of introducing a sunset clause to the Regulation as well as resolving once and for all the issue of civilian court jurisdiction.

Another lacuna that may arise is that in its urgency to complete the process, the government has bypassed the elected representatives of the tribal people. If the FATA vote in the Parliament is placed under scrutiny, one notices that the opinion of those who were most affected by the FATA merger was divided. Only two FATA MNAs out of a total of nine voted in favour of the bill. This is contrary to the principles of democracy, where the minority vote of FATA parliamentarians held sway, riding roughshod over the other parliamentarians. Even if it were well intentioned, conscientious objectors like Maulana Fazlur Rehman, who is politically savvy, may pounce upon it to challenge the merger that the ultimate will of the FATA residents was not obtained. The Maulana and his ilk have been canvassing for a separate province rather than a merger and have been demanding an expression of self-determination by the people of FATA.

Ali Warsi, in his opinion piece on 30 May 2018, has rightly called attention to Muhammad Ali Jinnah’s 14 points. The eighth point read, “No bill or resolution or any part thereof shall be passed in any legislature or any other elected body if three fourths of the members of any community in that particular body oppose it as being injurious to the interests of that community or in the alternative.”Jinnah was clear in his concept that more than twenty five percent of the members of ‘all communities’, especially the one that will directly be impacted by the bill under discussion, should vote in favour. Time will tell whether the merger was a boon or bane for the FATA residents.

The writer is a retired Group Captain of PAF. He is a columnist, analyst and TV talk show host, who has authored six books on current affairs, including three on China

Published in Daily Times, June 2^nd 2018.