The corridor challenge

The Prime Minister, in deference to the increasingly vocal concerns of members of the opposition about a change in routing of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) to favour his home province of Punjab despite repeated assurances to the contrary by several federal ministers, invited senior leadership of all political parties represented in parliament to a briefing at the Prime Minister's House. The date for the meeting, the 13th of May, proved highly inauspicious because of the Safoora Chowrangi tragedy. However, the briefing did take place as senior leadership of all parties was already assembled at the Prime Minister's House, which subsequently became a source of public anger in the social media with the footage of our parliamentarians eating lunch at the time that the families of the victims of the tragedy were visibly grieving being aired on all the channels.
The briefing was given by the Minister for Planning, Development and Reforms, Ahsan Iqbal, and given that he had previously held several press conferences categorically maintaining each time that there had been no change in the routing of the CPEC, which was disbelieved by several opposition parties, his briefing again left many of the parliamentarians dissatisfied. It may have been more appropriate for the briefing to be given by some other federal minister. CPEC design is hardly a matter of national security and therefore a more appropriate forum for such a briefing would have been the parliament as all members of the assembly rather than merely the senior leadership of parties should have been given the option to assess the evidence and then to draw appropriate conclusions in the matter.
What is baffling is not only the controversy that has come to surround the projects in the CPEC in spite of repeated government assurances reflecting a high level of distrust with the ruling party's claims but also the government's reticence in releasing the information on CPEC projects. Irrespective of whether the 46 billion dollars worth of Memoranda of Understanding (MoUs) signed between the Chinese and Pakistani governments are at the market rate or at a concessional rate, any country, developed and developing alike, would consider such a large inflow into the country's infrastructure facilities as a major achievement. Hence the best approach would be for various ministries who are executors/implementors/and facilitators in the CPEC projects to upload those MoUs relating to their domain on their websites. This unfortunately has not happened and the government ministers continue to give briefings that are prepared by their ministries and which do not explicitly reflect Chinese inputs leaving room for accusatory speculation. That the speculation could well reach a level which may compromise the execution of these projects is a concern that the government must deal with in a timely fashion.
A government has the right to determine its development priorities in terms of projects and hence even if other political parties consider one project should have been greater priority than another it remains the prerogative of the ruling party to take the final decision. For example, there is much criticism against the PML-N for prioritising the Metrobus over clean drinking water projects or for implementation of the National Action Plan, yet no one argues against the clear prerogative of the federal government to set its expenditure priorities.
The federal government must represent the interests of all provinces and in this context it has to identify projects that are in the national as opposed to one province's interest. And even if the concerns voiced by members of the opposition are ill-considered yet within a parliamentary democracy it is their right to seek answers and it is the government's duty to respond. That clearly has yet to happen with respect to the CPEC.