Daily Times

To recap, the PTI federal government and the government of Sindh have serious differences over the process of accountability; the distribution of natural resources particularly water and gas; jobs in the federal secretariat and federal entities; the federally funded development schemes; the uplift of Karachi; the appointment of senior officers and the quantum of provincial autonomy as specified by the 18th Amendment. All these issues could be addressed by meaningful coordination between the federal government and the provincial administration. What is aggravating the situation is the chronic lack of this meaningful cooperation. This reminds us of the controversy of 1990s when the federal government and the provincial administration of Punjab indulged in over such matters.

The provincial government of Sindh has reduced the powers and the bridging role of the Governor. The Governor being the representative of the federal government in the province cannot play a significant role in defusing the tension between the federal and provincial government. Thus, it falls on the shoulders of the Prime Minister or the Minister for Provincial Coordination to step forward to address the controversial matters. The provincial government’s stance on the above disputes can only be ignored to the peril of the federal bonds. No doubt about it that the provincial government has gained notoriety in maladministration, mismanagement and corruption and has completely failed to meet the basic needs of the people of Sindh in terms of education, healthcare, sanitation, livelihood, security of life and property. Notwithstanding this, the federal government is constitutionally obliged to ensure fair, just, transparent and equal opportunities for all the federal units irrespective of the political affiliation of any administration.

This democracy howsoever imperfect it is and the freedom of press and publication despite many restrictions have helped people value their constitutional rights and fundamental freedoms

The people of Sindh as earlier said have historic reasons for their disillusionment with the federal regimes. As the chances of independence from the colonial yoke brightened, the politicians of Sindh who consisted of big landlords, Pirs and Sajadehnashins flocked to the All India Muslim League. When we strayed from the right path of nation-building and indulged in political chicanery weakening the Pakistan Muslim League, the above Sindhi politicians like their peers from other provinces felt no qualms in joining the Republican Party and later the Convention Muslim League. They believed in politics of power. The crumb of power remained their ultimate motto. The mass-based Hari Committee of Hyder Bukhsh Jatoi and the Nationalist Jiye-Sindh Mahaz of G.M. Syed fell victim to the political machinations of these wily politicians and died a slow death in the whirl of the populist politics of Z.A. Bhutto in the country.

All the Convention Muslim Leaguers jumped on the bandwagon of the mass popularity of Bhutto who rather wooed them as ‘electables’ to join his nascent party. They occupied important places in the hierarchical structure of the party in Sindh and managed to have all the party tickets for National Assembly constituencies to the chagrin of the middle class nationalists, leftists and hardcore ideological workers. Bhutto won the majority of the NA constituencies but could not sweep Sindh like Punjab.

Bhutto endowed the class of politicians with more privilege and power. But Bhutto knew that his political strength was deeply anchored in the poor masses. Therefore, he kept on bonding with them. The people of Sindh were disillusioned with the rule of Bhutto in the end. But the way Zia ul Haq ended his life washed all his sins and made him a legend. Benazir kept alive her father’s tradition of identifying her politics with the general masses and depending on the ‘electables’ in the elections. After Muhtarma, Asif Zardari managed to rise at the helm of the party. It needs no elaboration what complexion the party acquired in his tenure. The people’s disillusionment with the party is complete but the wily landlords and feudal politicians in their third generation have perfected the art of creating the bogey of the federal invasion on their province’s rights or raising ethnic slogans to deepen the fear of the division of Sindh to win the elections. They have made it a point to stem the emergence of any alternative political platform to challenge their kleptocratic rule which has clearly been complicit in the plunder of the precious lands of the province by the known land grabbers and estate tycoons.

With their past bitter experience with the rule of any national political party or any dictatorial regime in the center, the Sindhi masses seem reluctant to trust any political entity that does not have a substantial representation from their province at all tiers. This is where the PTI suffered a setback by depending on a few discredited landlords instead of going for the political activists from the middle class. Today, the people of Sindh find themselves at a crossroads. The political tussle between the PTI regime and the provincial PPP administration is fueling their apprehensions and anger as they find that there are scores of federal entities with the least representation from Sindh or that more than half a million jobs in the federal bodies rightfully belonging to them have been doled out to the people mainly from the other federal units particularly Punjab.

We should bear in mind that we are not living in the era of One-Unit or under a dictatorial rule. This democracy howsoever imperfect it is and the freedom of press and publication despite many restrictions have helped people value their constitutional rights and fundamental freedoms. They could no more be suppressed to abdicate from their genuine rights. The federal government despite all its reservations about the PPP administration in Sindh has to come up with a mutually acceptable formula to resolve all these controversial issues in the interests of national and federal harmony. The dilly dallying in state affairs always compounds the difficulties of the thrones.

The writer was a member of the Foreign Service of Pakistan and he has authored two books