Nawaz Sharif: ''Century’s joke''

Couldn’t this be the century’s joke? Mian Nawaz Sharif, the supremo of his own faction of The Muslim League, says that the government is not serious in creating new provinces in southern Punjab. But doesn’t this hold good for his own PML (N), too? Isn’t it that it too is not serious about this? Isn’t it a fact that the PML (N) brought up the resolution for a Bahawalpur province in the Punjab Assembly after the PPP mooted the creation of a Seraiki province at various public, political and parliamentary forums feverishly and persistently? The move was evidently intended to neutralise the PPP and cut it down from garnering votes in southern Punjab by playing this politics of province. Otherwise, could it be presumed by any stretch of imagination that either the PPP is unaware that it doesn’t have the vote to adopt a constitutional amendment by a two-thirds majority in the Punjab Assembly or the PML (N) doesn’t know that it too has not the required vote in the parliament for a constitutional amendment for the creation of a Bahawalpur province? Both are indeed playing politics, and the electoral politics at that. And with this, both are playing a cruel joke on the people. Province creation is a very serious business. It involves acute local sensitivities and passionate people’s aspirations and felt needs. And it is unpardonable to trivialise this serious business for petty politics and electoral gains. There indeed is not something quaint or new about demands for new provinces or about carving out new provinces. Countries do undergo their shaping or reshaping off and on to meet popular demands for new provinces. India has gone through this process after independence and now boasts of many more states than were there at that time. And more demands for states are being articulated presently and the political class over there is listening to them intently. And it is not unimaginable if the country sees a new state or two emerging in not too distant a future. Instances of new provinces are not rare elsewhere too. In fact, more provinces surely make for a more focused administration, more focused development and more focused fulfillment of the people’s popular yearnings for progress and advancement. Accordingly, voices are coming out in the country not just from southern Punjab or Bahawalpur to be made a province. The tribal people are crying for their province in the Federally-Administered Tribal Areas to get into the national mainstream, a craving denied to them rudely since independence. The people of Hazara region in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa are calling to be made a province. The Pakhtuns in Balochistan have long been demanding that the areas they dominantly inhabit should either be turned into a province or be merged with Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa. Even the rumblings of a province are heard in the Potohar region of Punjab. In time, it is not inconceivable if the calls for province begin coming from other parts and regions of the country. One shouldn’t be shy of such demands. Rather, those should be taken in all earnestness and considered seriously. And the political parties across the spectrum would do well to put their think tanks to the task of studying and examining these demands dispassionately, objectively and sensibly. For, creation of a province isn’t just determining the geographical boundaries. It involves much more, and more importantly. Ticklish issues like resources distribution, capacity building, generation of revenues and so on come in critically. Hence, the political parties and groups must evolve their stances on the issue of provinces in the light of the studies of their think tanks and put their ideas and thoughts in their election manifestoes. And with this, they must go to the electorate in the hustings, telling unambiguously what new provinces they envisage and why. The electorate’s verdict will be the true voice of the people about the new provinces that in time should be donned with the apparel of reality by the new legislatures and the new governments. What presently is going on is a mere political circus being staged primarily by the PPP and the PML (N). It is a mere fraud. Their theatre has no substance to it. Both must take a mercy on the people and stop befooling them for their own petty politics.