LAHORE – ASHRAF MUMTAZ - Although the Muttahida Qaumi Movement ostensibly opposed the repeal of the People’s Sindh Local Government Act (PSLGA) and its replacement with the 1979 Zia-era local bodies system, analysts say the ‘estranged’ party has in fact helped the PPP do what it wanted to do and what is in the interest of the both the ‘erstwhile’ allies.
Sindh Governor Dr Ishratul Ebad’s departure to Dubai en route to London at this crucial moment facilitated the PPP to put in place a system which his party – the MQM – claims to be strongly opposed to.
Had the governor stayed at home and used his constitutional powers the restoration of the 1979 system could have been blocked or delayed for some time.
The MQM governor travel plan indicates as if he is working under instructions from both the MQM and the PPP.
It was on Thursday (Feb 21) that the Sindh Assembly repealed the PSLGA, a law which the PPP and the MQM had hammered out after several months of political haggling and on-off relationship.
Governor Ebad took a flight abroad, enabling the Sindh Assembly speaker to take over as acting governor and sign the very next day the revival of the 1979 system.
Had the MQM been genuinely opposed to the revival of the decades old law, it would not have allowed the governor to go abroad even for a day.
Under Article 116 of the Constitution, no legislation enacted by a provincial assembly can get the status of a law unless the governor gives his assent.
When an enactment is presented to him, the governor has 10 days to give his assent or to return it to the legislature for its reconsideration as a whole or any specific part thereof.
This means that the MQM’s governor was in a position to delay the matter for at least 10 days.
And once the governor uses his constitutional power, it would have taken the government some days to convene the Sindh Assembly session and discuss the matter anew.
Assuming that the provincial legislature had referred the matter again to the governor within a few days, the constitutional head of the province was again in a position to delay the matter for another 10 days under Article 116(3) of the Constitution. (In case the governor again doesn’t give the assent, the matter is deemed to have been assented at the expiration of 10-day deadline).
In other words the governor was in a position to block the PPP’s move till the middle of March, by which time the Sindh Assembly, like the National Assembly and other provincial legislatures, would have ceased to exist.
This is not to say that the governor should have necessarily adopted this course of action. In fact, if he had used his constitutional powers, it would not have been possible for the people to doubt the seriousness of the MQM leadership. However, a senior MQM leader says his party was not in a position to resist the PPP designs for long.
Talking to TheNation on Saturday, he said the PPP was planning to bring former home minister Dr Zulfikar Mirza back to the centre stage and appoint him as head of the People’s Amn Committee.
“We feel concerned about the security of our people. The PPP wants bloodshed in Karachi. We are taking measures to save our people”, he said, defending the MQM’s strategy.
According to him, the governor has gone out of Pakistan to hold consultations with the party leadership and decide the future course of action.
Answering a question, he said there was no possibility of cooperation between the PPP and the MQM during or after the elections.
Senior advocate Akram Sheikh, however, thinks the PPP and the MQM are moving together to safeguard their interests.
He says the PPP has enabled the MQM to occupy the seat of the opposition leader in the Sindh Assembly, and thus the two parties would decide who should be in the caretaker setup in the province.
He believes the MQM’s governor would be retained to achieve the targets the two parties have set for themselves.
“It’s a serious fraud on the Constitution”, Mr Sheikh said of the repeal of the bipartisan local government system the PPP and the MQM had cobbled together and its replacement with the 1979 ordinance.