Forthcoming NFC and divisions

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Forthcoming NFC and divisions

The National Finance Commission is due to hold its inaugural meeting in Islamabad, after couple of days with Finance Minister Shaukat Tarin duly in the chair, but it is expected to be a fiery session, as the provinces have not been taken on board about the formula for distribution, or what resources would form part of the Federal Divisible Pool. All the provinces have differing approaches to the distribution issue. The Punjab supports a continuation of the current distribution according to population. Sindh favours changing to distribution on the basis of revenue generation, while Balochistan favours distribution on the basis of area. The NWFP favours distribution on the basis of need, and also now favours the effects of the War on Terror being factored in. It also looks to the NFC as the forum where it can obtain its share of the hydel profits, though other provinces, Balochistan the foremost, believe that the hydel profits are an entirely separate issue, to the extent of being governed by a separate Article of the Constitution. Because of these different approaches, the session is likely to be a stormy one. The provinces will also be awaiting the centre actually putting forward its proposals on which of the taxes it collects is it actually willing to put in the Federal Divisible Pool for onward distribution. That will determine what the final distribution will be like.
The NWFP's claim to hydel profits may not be finalized by the Commission, but when the needs of the province are considered, along with those of the rest, the expected revenues from those profits will certainly be factored in. Thus the hydel profits cannot be left entirely out of the reckoning of the Commission. However, the Commission's primary task is to distribute resources so that the provinces remain solvent after meeting their development and non-development expenditures for the Award period. However, it is also true that no two Commissions have made their Awards for the mandated period and been composed of elected officials both times. The current Award is an ad hoc arrangement in the Musharraf era after an Award made by caretaker finance ministers in 1996-7. The NFC Award alone will not solve any of the problems of the provinces, none of which has raised a demand which is likely to form part of its agenda, but its being made will help the Centre solve the problems of provinces chafing under too much central control. However, while the Award is supposed to put the finances of all the governments, central and provincial, on sound footing, it should not be viewed as meeting the President's reiterated commitment to solve the problems of Balochistan.


Political squabble

MQM chief Altaf Hussain's call to the Chief Justice to probe into the 1992 army operation in Karachi or his suggestion that a truth and reconciliation commission may be constituted to distinguish facts from fiction about that unfortunate chapter of our history one would certainly not take exception to,. There is need to put the operation in the correct perspective. To start with it should be clear that it began well before the "Jinnahpur conspiracy" to which Mr Hussain referred had come to light and its target were those elements that had gone berserk in the city and rendered the lives of its denizens highly insecure. There were frequent incidents of abductions of rival groups; dead bodies were being discovered in gunny bags; there were no-go areas and torture cells; reports of extortions of money were rife; and there were exchange of prisoners between political parties, who were routinely in bad shape after having been subjected to inhuman treatment. To substantiate the existence of these criminal activities, TV stations and newspapers published photographs, including that of torture cells, which contained various brutalising devices.
Responding to the MQM chief's demand that Mian Nawaz Sharif should tell the public why as Prime Minister he did nothing to stop the operation, PML(N) Information Secretary Ahsan Iqbal has blamed then army chief General Asif Nawaz for starting the operation while Mian Nawaz was out of the country. One would like to hope that the distressing aspect of our history of the army considering itself all-powerful, not accountable to the political bosses, is now over.  MQM became a partner in power of General Pervez Musharraf; and why Mr Hussain was now asking the army and the intelligence agencies to destroy the files against the MQM when he did not do so during the Musharraf regime.