Federal cabinet in Quetta

This time around Prime Minister Gilani seems to be living up to his word. Last June when he visited Quetta to speak at the Military Staff College he promised local media men he would be visiting Balochistan once every month; and that promise is being met.
According to a Business Recorder report, the federal cabinet would meet in Quetta on Wednesday 'to discuss a one-point agenda, ie Aghaz-e-Haqooq-e-Balochistan', for which a special plane has been chartered which will fly the ministers to the provincial capital. One may ask after all what stands in the way of a fuller discussion on the reforms package in Islamabad that the entire federal cabinet has to be flown to Quetta at considerable expense.
The fact is that the package fondly called the Aghaz-e-Haqooq-e-Balochistan was announced by President Zardari some two years ago and its implementation falls far short of the declared schedule. Not more than 20 percent of the committed projects have been initiated, principal hurdles being rampant bureaucratic corruption, poor oversight and deteriorating law and order situation in Balochistan.
How is it that where the disproportionately large provincial cabinet headed by Chief Minister Raisani has failed Prime Minister Gilani can succeed? We don't see that happening; the visit of the federal cabinet to Quetta would be nothing more than a photo opportunity - an art Yousuf Raza Gilani seems to have carefully honed. Such a luxury of flying a crowd of ministers and officials should have been avoided by a government facing a huge budgetary deficit mainly due to fiscal indiscipline.
The problems besetting the people of Balochistan are too grim to brook gimmicks. No doubt, the 7th National Finance Commission (NFC) Award has significantly raised the share of Balochistan; of late its mineral wealth has come under sharper focus and the Gwadar port rightly is seen as future hub of regional trade with potential to attract foreign investment in the province. But there is not much in evidence so far to suggest that such a huge potential and ready-to-be-exploited opportunity that has come in the way of people of Balochistan will be harnessed for the greater good of its people.
There may be quite a few reasons that tend to freeze the people of Balochistan in its distant past, but the one that outclasses all is the extremely poor quality of the political leadership. That the province never had the chance to develop during the successive military regimes, there are no two opinions about it. But no less disappointingly, even during the eras of the elected governments, the lot of ordinary people of Balochistan remained unchanged as a tribal-cum-feudalistic leadership took over the reins of power.
Even today with more than three years into power, the Balochistan government is nothing more than a cabal of powerful tribal chiefs for most of whom the ultimate in life is cabinet membership. That the Pakistan People's Party, which never tires of flaunting its egalitarian credentials, has to patronise such people is extremely frustrating. If the reforms package has yet to find its feet on the ground in Balochistan it is basically because in between the people and their prosperity stand the perennially poor governance, archaic politics and flimsy federal support.
That said we expect that the federal cabinet in is meeting in Quetta would look into the problems afflicting the Baloch society rather incisively and seek pragmatic solutions. For one, the cabinet should go beyond merely monetary incentives - some additional funds and a few carrots like more jobs will not work with the self-respecting people of Balochistan.
Instead, it should look at the people's problems through a political prism and address them more in the spirit of making up for the past injustices than offering a few lollypops of so-called mega projects. An average Baloch has yet to forget, and perhaps forgive, the brutal treatment meted out to their tribal chiefs by General Ayub; aerial bombing they were subjected to during Z A Bhutto's government and the killing of Nawab Akbar Bugti at the order of General Pervez Musharraf.
This is the battle for the hearts and minds of the Balochistan people that the government in Islamabad should plan and win. Yes economic backwardness of the province of Balochistan is a huge challenge but no less critical are the problems like the missing persons, the unrestrained use of force by the Frontier Corps (FC) in the name of securing law and order, highly alarming incidents of ethnic cleansing, sectarian strife and foreign-funded insurgency.
At the same time the prime minister and his team are expected to explore ways and means to mainstream the presently narrow-based provincial politics - as it is beset with myriad shortcomings, including the absence of the Mahmood Khan Achakzai-led Pakhtunkhwa Milli Awami Party, which had boycotted the 2008 election.