Prime Minister Imran Khan on Wednesday said that he strongly believed in the ‘devolution of power’. However, his party's government in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) does not appear to agree with him. The KP government has passed a resolution delaying the local body elections in the province for two year. The Election Commission of Pakistan has termed the decision ‘violation’ of Election Act, 2017.
The premier said that 18th Amendment has turned chief ministers into some kind of ‘dictators’. However, he ruled out any plan to roll back the amendment but said that some subjects, especially the National Finance Commission (NFC) Award “needed to be reviewed and fixed”.
During the premier’s first visit to the province in the coronavirus crisis, Sindh Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah was not invited to any official meetings that PM Khan held.
DAWN reported that while talking to journalists at Governor House, PM Imran said: “Devolution is always effective for a good governance system. I have no objection to the 18th Amendment nor am I against it. But they have included several things in that reform in haste. They definitely needed to be reviewed and fixed. There are several things wrong in it [18th Amendment] and they are not practical.”
The prime minister said that in the devolution system, powers were transferred from provinces to local administration. “But here we see that our local bodies don’t enjoy any power. All powers are enjoyed by the chief ministers and they have become a kind of dictator. He’s not offering powers to the local administration. The effective devolution functioning requires a three-tier system but here it’s stuck in two tiers.”
While commenting on the NFC Award, the premier said: “What kind of system it is that under which the government goes into Rs700 billion deficit. After paying 65 per cent to the provinces and over security and debt servicing, we start the budget with Rs700bn deficit. We design our budget depending on loans. This is absolutely unfeasible. There is a wrong impression being created that we are rolling back 18th Amendment or thinking anything wrong about the NFC. But there is a strong need to discuss this serious issue. We only want to remove the anomalies and fix things.”
Sindh CM advisor Barrister Murtaza Wahab told the newspaper that the provincial government came to know about the PM’s visit through media on Tuesday. “So the CM kept his schedule open, anticipating his engagements with the prime minister. But the prime minister landed here on Tuesday evening and the CM was not invited for any meeting.”