Invoking Article 149 would be of no use but may divide Sindh, warn PPP leaders

Rejecting the proposal of Federal Law Minister Farogh Naseem to invoke the Article 149 of the Constitution in order to let the Centre take over the administrative control of Karachi, Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) leaders Raza Rabbani and Saeed Ghani have said such a move would be of no use except causing division of Sindh on the basis of its rural and urban parts.

Rabbani, who is currently a senator and have served as the Senate chairman in the past, and Ghani, the incumbent Sindh information and labour minister, expressed their views regarding the idea of invoking the Article 149 while addressing a press conference at the committee room of the Sindh Assembly.

The PPP leaders said the federal government, by giving suggestions to the effect of imposing the Article 149 and assuming control of Karachi, had shown that it wanted to run the country in an environment of fear and harassment.

Rabbani said in case any attempt was made to roll back the 18th constitutional amendment, the smaller provinces would be compelled to make a larger alliance as any move against the 18th amendment would be against their aspirations.

He said any greater alliance of the smaller provinces would prove to be quite troublesome for the present government. The senator was of the view that the federal government had failed to give the due fiscal share to the provinces under the National Finance Commission’s (NFC) award in accordance with the Article 161 of the Constitution.

He said the people of Sindh would never accept any attempt to separate Karachi from the rest of the province and the political leaders who were thinking about it should keep in mind the sentiments of people in the province.

Urging the federal government to duly honour the Constitution, Rabbani warned that the ruling party in Sindh would not tolerate any conspiracy to do discrimination against the province.

He said the people had already been facing serious hardships due to unprecedented hike in the prices of essential commodities and the economic situation of the country had severely deteriorated owing to the bad performance of the federal government.

He went on to claim that curtailing the constitutional powers of the provinces was one of the conditions laid down by the International Monetary Fund before the present government.

Following Rabbani, Ghani said the standard of living of the people had gone down beyond the poverty line during the present regime that had provided no relief to the public and caused price hike and unemployment.

The provincial information minister said the federal government of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) had already caused fiscal and economic crisis and it was now acting upon a conspiracy to cause constitutional turmoil in the country.

He said the federal government under the Constitution was empowered to provide advice to any of the provinces on fiscal and law and order issues but here the PTI’s government had been unduly attempting to exercise executive authority in the case of Sindh by misinterpreting the Article 149 of the Constitution.

He said the PTI government was a fascist administration as it had been attempting to cause unrest in Karachi. The solution to the problems of Karachi did not lie in the Article 149, Ghani said. He added that any move to invoke the constitutional provision would be viewed as an attempt to unconstitutionally interfere with the affairs of the province and would also be considered as an attack on the provincial autonomy.

He condemned the suggestions of invoking the Article 149, saying it was one of the new conspiracies being hatched up against the people of Karachi. Ghani said the people of Sindh and their elected leadership would not accept any attempt to conspire against the capital city of the province. The federal government has already been forewarned against hatching up such conspiracies, he asserted.