LAHORE (The Thursday Times) — Punjab Assembly Speaker Malik Muhammad Ahmad Khan has questioned whether elected representatives could set aside a referendum on new provinces, lending support to Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi’s call for a public vote, while Federal Health Minister Mustafa Kamal said smaller provinces were “Pakistan’s need”.
Speaking in Lahore on Friday, Malik said the Constitution allowed provincial assemblies to move resolutions on creating new provinces, but asked what position an assembly or a provincial government could take if the people themselves had backed a new province in a referendum. The people were sovereign, he said, and their representatives could not override their expressed wishes.
“When the people speak for themselves, it makes no difference whether their representatives speak or remain silent,” he told reporters, adding that the purpose of a referendum was to find a lasting solution to a disputed question. People in one region might call for a new province, he said, while people in another might not accept the idea.
Malik said whether the provincial assembly could be bypassed was a constitutional question that would need interpretation. He also said he supported smaller administrative units for better service delivery, but remained a strong advocate of a Provincial Finance Commission, and said effective local governments were essential for self-rule.
His remarks go to the heart of the objection raised by the Pakistan Peoples Party, which says the Sindh Assembly must have a say in any proposal to divide the province. Under Article 239 of the Constitution, a change to a province’s limits must be passed by a two-thirds majority of that province’s assembly, and ministers from the PML-N and the PPP said this week that a referendum alone could not create a new province.
In Karachi, Kamal said creating new, smaller provinces was “not anyone’s wish but Pakistan’s need” and had become “indispensable to save and run the state”. Punjab, he said, was bigger than 180 countries, Sindh bigger than 175, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa bigger than 162, and Balochistan bigger than 185.
Kamal, who was opening the Sindh regional office of the Allied Health Professionals Council, said 57.5% of the federal divisible pool went to the provinces, which had received Rs8.84 trillion this year, “but the money is not reaching down to the village level”. The biggest problem, he said, was that the provinces had not passed power further down.
“When a family grows, a new room has to be built; that does not break up the home,” Kamal said. He added that allied health professionals and institutions in Sindh would no longer have to travel to Islamabad for registration now that the council had an office in Karachi.
Naqvi reopened the debate on Thursday, when he said a referendum should let the people decide on new provinces. Defence Minister Khawaja Asif has said Pakistan could have as many as 12 provinces, provided they are not drawn along ethnic or language lines. The President House has said the question of provinces did not come up when Naqvi met President Asif Ali Zardari in Nawabshah on Thursday night.
