The CCI tussle

With the government not having arranged a meeting of the Council of Common Interests in the last ten months, a number of outstanding issues have begun to pile up as potential conflicts. The 18th Amendment mandated that a meeting of the CCI would be called every three months as a constitutional mechanism of ensuring that the tricky relationship between the federal and provincial governments in Pakistan remains in the balance. The PML-N government has only called five meetings of the CCI instead of the nine that are mandated. As a result provincial concerns over water, oil, gas and energy policy decisions, a new census, privatisation and the CPEC have been made to linger too long. It now appears that the Sindh and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa governments have moved the CCI about recent federal government decisions on oil and gas, alleging that these decisions have encroached upon provincial rights guaranteed under the constitution. The immediate reason cited are recent moves by the Cabinet Committee on Energy and Economic Coordination Committee over the allocation of new oil and gas discoveries, natural gas prices, deregulating oil prices and issues pertaining to LNG.
The PML-N government has a terrible tendency of concentrating all power amongst a tightly knit group, but the tactic cannot work for long in a federation where it only has significant political clout in one province. While one can admit that the debate over LNG, which is an import, is more complex, decisions on Pakistan’s oil and gas reserves must go through the CCI to be considered applicable. KP and Sindh seem to have alternate gas allocation policies in hand which should be put to debate in the meeting of all members of the federation. There are indications that the federal government is ready to convene a meeting of the CCI next month, but there are no guarantees yet. Having already come under criticism from opposition parties for ignoring the CCI and pursuing policies on its own on matters concerning all, the next CCI will be a heated affair – whenever it is summoned. What is more worrying is that no one from the government has attempted to articulate any excuse for the inordinate delay in calling the next meeting of the CCI. The constitutional requirement – that the CCI be convened every three months – is there for a reason. Matters pertaining to the federal-provincial relationship must be resolved as they come up instead of letting them pile up.