Civil society activists warn against tampering with 18th amendment

A group of civil society, trade unions, human rights, and labour rights activists have expressed serious concerns over reports in a section of media about attempts to tamper with, sabotage or annul the 18th Amendment of the Constitution as well as the National Finance Commission (NFC) award.

In a joint statement on Thursday, the civil society activists, including Karamat Ali and Zulfiqar Shah from the Pakistan Institute of Labour Education and Research (Piler), Habibuddin Junaidi from the Peoples Labour Bureau, Nasir Mansoor from the National Trade Union Federation, Farhat Parveen from the National Organisation of Working Communities, Zehra Khan from the Home-based Women Workers Federation, Liaqat Sahi from the Democratic Workers Union of State Bank of Pakistan, Anis Haroon from the Women Action Forum, Mahnaz Rahman from the Aurat Foundation, Asad Iqbal Butt from the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan and Qamrul Hassan from the International Union of Food, warned that any attempt to modify the key amendment in the constitution would be taken as an attack on the federation.

“In 2010, the Constitution was restored to its original form through the 18th amendment with a thumping majority, under which many previous amendments during the dictatorship era were erased,” they said.

The civil society activists maintained that any attempt to sabotage the 18th amendment would be tantamount to usurping the provincial autonomy, which the nation had achieved after a long period. It would open up a Pandora’s Box if the 18th amendment was touched upon, they warned.

The statement said that the 18th amendment had offered a protection to the National Finance Commission (NFC) award. “The NFC award has provided provinces a major share from the federal divisible pool of revenues. The federal government has been trying to reduce the share of the provinces and on many occasions it [made such attempts], but due to the strong constitutional protection, it did not succeed. Now some elements in the federal government have started an untimely discussion in the national media to [tamper with] the 18th amendment.”

It is a matter of the fact the NFC award has not been implemented fully in its letter and spirit and a new award was overdue as the 7th NFC Award was announced in 2009-10, read the statement. The activists said that since then eighth and ninth awards are overdue, but no serious measure has been made to revise this five-year period award.