This article was published in Dawn News on November 22, 2025, at the following link

https://www.dawn.com/news/1956668/provincial-autonomy

PROVINCIAL autonomy has always been an ultra-sensitive subject in Pakistan.

The country was split in 1971 primarily because we failed to manage the just expectations of the erstwhile eastern province of Pakistan. We experimented with various constitutional formulas to satisfy the aspirations of our former eastern wing, but the half-hearted implementation of the agreed constitutional arrangement in 1956 led to a weakening of trust between the federation and its eastern wing.

The military coup of 1958 and the subsequent 1962 constitution given by one person, Field Marshal Ayub Khan, and its unitary contours further disappointed East Pakistan. Therefore, there is a need to be extra-sensitive when it comes to provincial rights and autonomy, not only in letter but, more importantly, in spirit of the constitutional arrangement.

Fortunately, the near-unanimous passage of the 1973 Constitution created a robust legal base for federalism in what remained of the country, consisting of the four provinces and the federally administered territories. The 18th Constitutional Amendment, passed with broad consensus 37 years later, further strengthened the federal constitutional framework.

Over the subsequent 15 years, the provinces have emerged much stronger, more prosperous and even more assertive. Although we hear voices pleading for more autonomy or complaining about too much autonomy, the fact is that Pakistan has set a firm constitutional framework for federalism.

While after a long and painful journey, we may have been successful in settling most of our legal issues regarding federalism, the political forces are apparently not conducting politics in the true spirit of the constitutional provisions regarding provincial autonomy. In general, political parties continue to be the proverbial lengthened shadows of their top leaders and there is hardly any ‘devolution’ of powers from the central figure to the provinces. The overall organisation of most of the parties is weak, but as one goes down the hierarchy from federal to local, there is a steep decline in the powers and autonomy of sub-national organisations.

Most of the decisions are taken at the central level, which the provincial set-up is supposed to implement without question. Even if provincial parliamentary boards exist, final decisions about candidate selection for provincial assemblies are taken by the central parliamentary boards which, in many cases, authorise the top party leader to take the decision.

According to the Constitution, the election of the chief minister is the prerogative of the members of the respective provincial assemblies. They do go through the motions of electing a leader of the House but the candidate of the majority party is almost invariably picked by the central party leader who in many cases, may not belong to the province.

Since the Constitution binds assembly members to vote according to party direction or face ouster from the assembly, members have no choice but to go along with the choice of the party leader, even if they have strong reservations about the candidate.

The top party leadership designs the system to keep CMs dependent on its directions.

To understand the powerlessness of the MPAs, a case in point is the nomination of the little-known and least-qualified Usman Buzdar as a PTI candidate for the position of CM after the 2018 elections. The poor MPAs had absolutely no idea who they would be asked to vote for until party chairman Imran Khan dropped the bombshell just two days before the CM’s election. The members had no role whatsoever in picking the nominee and were generally shocked at the choice but went along with it and elected Mr Buzdar as CM.

It is now an open secret that the logic behind selecting a weak CM was that there would be no resistance to running the province from the federal capital through the prime minister’s principal secretary. A similar scenario was seen in the case of KP after the 2024 election, when a rather weak and indecisive candidate for the CM’s position was nominated so that the province could be run by the PM’s secretariat.

It would be unfair to single out the PTI in this context. PM Nawaz Sharif’s choice of Ghulam Haider Wyne as Punjab CM in 1990 followed the same pattern. Although Mr Wyne was a seasoned political worker, he was weak as a CM and followed the PM’s directions in running the province without asking any questions.

The top party leadership designs the system to keep CMs dependent on its directions even in routine provincial matters. The former KP chief minister, Mr Ali Amin Gandapur, was asked by his party to seek the directions of the incarcerated party founder Mr Imran Khan before passing the province’s annual budget for 2025-26. He faced extreme criticism when he had to get the budget passed without his leader’s directions as the federal and Punjab governments denied him the opportunity to meet Mr Khan in prison. This must have been one of the reasons he was later removed from his position.

The new CM delayed the formation of his provincial cabinet for 18 days and the provincial government remained nearly paralysed because he wanted to get Mr Khan’s approval by meeting him in jail. But the prison authorities again did not let him meet his leader.

These are only a few instances; almost the entire political system, contrary to the spirit of the Constitution, is geared towards total obedience to the central party leadership in purely provincial matters, making a mockery of provincial autonomy.

Framers of the Constitution have done their job to ensure provincial autonomy; it is now for the political parties and their leadership to devolve their powers to the provincial organisations of the party and the CM, if the party happens to be in power in a province.

Centralisation of powers is not only against the spirit of the Constitution, it also stunts the growth of the party organisation and provincial leadership, weakening democracy in general.