Rabbani vows to fight for 18th Amendment

ISLAMABAD: Former Senate chairman and Senator Mian Raza Rabbani has said some political parties want to roll back the 18th Amendment under the garb of empowering local governments, but this attempt will be resisted in and out of parliament.

"These forces are playing with fire. Given the sharp internal fault lines, any such moves will have serious repercussions on the federation," he said in statement on Monday. 

He said the agendas of the World Bank, Pakistan’s ruling elite and centrist political parties seemed to have found a common ground. "Allocation of resources by the federal government to districts is a page from the dictator Musharraf," he said, adding that the purpose was to make provincial governments redundant and realise the establishment’s old desired dream of creating new administrative provinces by undoing the existing provinces. In this manner, not only new provinces will be established administratively and fiscally but reallocation of resources between the provinces and the federal government will take place, leading to an alteration in the NFC Award.