18TH Constitutional Amendment: Implications for the Federation of Pakistan

Abstract

Eighteenth Amendment to Pakistan’s Constitution has made the Prime Minister of Pakistan, and hence the parliament, stronger instead of the President by abolishing Article 58(2) (b) just as the ‘Glorious Revolution’ of 1688-1689 in England made the parliament stronger by abolishing ‘Divine Rights’ of the kings and paving the way towards the constitutional monarchy by passing the ‘Bill of Rights’ in 1689. Just as the ‘Bill of Rights’ constituted a new era of democracy in England, the 18th constitutional amendment has promised the same. Furthermore, this constitutional software has removed the Concurrent List from the Constitution of 1973, thereby assigning more administrative, legislative and fiscal responsibilities to the federating units. The paper finds that by the passage of the 18th amendment, concrete constitutional measures were taken to transform a ‘centralized federation’ into a ‘participatory federation’ and now it is the constitutionally-driven responsibility of the provinces to chalk out development projects, addressing the people’s demands through enhanced fiscal discipline and well-coordinated public policies at their levels. In addition, consensus over the 7th NFC award was an historically important event in the politicoconstitutional annals of the federation of Pakistan.