Change of government in Azad Kashmir

The ruling Muslim Conference in Azad Jammu & Kashmir (AJK) has split in Muzaffarabad and replaced Prime Minister Sardar Attique Ahmed with Sardar Muhammad Yaqub following a no-confidence vote based on allegations of “corruption and nepotism”. As expected, Sardar Attique has left after accusing the federal government of interfering in the politics of Azad Kashmir, warning it of instability in the region.

It is the Muslim Conference that has split, so it is difficult to see how the federal government could have engineered Sardar Sahib’s fall. Yet there could have been a tipping over the precipice when things were getting rough for him. It is true that all the opposition participated in the ouster vote, including 7 of AJKPP, 4 of Muslim League and 2 of MQM. The rest of the 32 out of a house 46 were his own men who are tired of his leadership for various reasons.

Charges of “interference” will never be irrelevant in AJK because of Article 21 of its Constitution which vests all authority in the prime minister of Pakistan rather than the prime minister of Azad Kashmir. This means the AJK PM serves at the pleasure of the Kashmir Affairs Ministry in Islamabad and often has to encash his infinite flexibility with marginal “collection” of rewards for himself and his cronies.

Sardar Attique’s Muslim Conference has been in power since July 2001 when the government of the AJKPP was toppled after it was accused of moral impropriety and promoting graft. The Muslim Conference was loyal to the PMLN and it had supported the Kashmir policy of General Zia too. After 2001, the realism of Muslim Conference made it ride with General Musharraf’s new proposals for Kashmir, like the Theory of Four Regions and the declaration of Line of Control (LoC) as Line of Commerce (LoC). The man behind this change was the intellectually supple Sardar Abdul Qayyum Khan, Sardar Attique’s father, who could communicate at the global level.

The PPP government — if it has at all participated in the toppling — may want to get rid of the vestiges of President Musharraf and his policy. Apart from that there seems no reason why Islamabad should be keen to bring in the change in Muzaffarabad. The real reason seems to be long incumbency and that permanent blot on AJK politics, of graft and nepotism. Since 2005, when the earthquake took place there, AJK has been flush with funds looking for the deserving among the affected population. It went to the discredit of Prime Minister Sardar Attique that many people fraudulently received house-building compensation many times over while a large number of the deserving remained deprived.

The recent anti-India surge in Pakistan has served well neither Sardar Attique nor his intellectually conceived policy over the Indian-held Jammu & Kashmir. He offended many people when, in a TV interview last week, he supported the victory of the National Conference there and welcomed Mr Omar Abdullah as the new chief minister in the Valley. This was anathema to the traditional Kashmiri in Pakistan who thinks that the Abdullah family was a “toady” of the Nehru family. The elections in Held Kashmir were a complex affair and most analysts in Pakistan have been unable to make sense of high voter turnout despite the Hurriyat Conference boycott. In the wake of the Mumbai attack and the rise in nationalist tempers, people manifest an easy tendency of falling on platitudes rather than opting for nuanced positions.

The mood could be changing in AJK, and not for the good of the PPP in Islamabad. The view is swerving to the right and is signalled by the resignation from the AJK assembly by the AJKPP leader Sardar Khalid Ibrahim who delivered himself of some strange sentences: “I have voted in favour of the no-trust motion, but the new set-up has come into being with the help of those who describe Kashmiri militants as terrorists and say that India was never a threat to Pakistan. The new set-up has made a greater compromise on the Kashmir issue than the one that has been sent packing and I announce my resignation from the assembly”.

Sardar Khalid should have resigned as head of the AJKPP because he despises the PPP government in Islamabad, and he should have stayed put in the Assembly as long as he could, using the platform to voice his point of view. The truth is that AJK parties have evolved in the opposite direction. The conservatives have been pushed by circumstances to the centre and the AJKPP has had to shift to the right.

Will the new prime minister, Sardar Yaqub, only cleanse the administration of corruption and leave the posturing over Kashmir alone? Sadly, the likelihood is that he will abandon the more courageous and creative political line of his predecessor and ratchet up the anti-India rhetoric now in vogue in Pakistan without regard to how far it pushes back the cause of Kashmir.

[editorial -Daily Times-Jan 8, 2009]

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Change in AJK 
 
The no-confidence move in the AJK assembly, which removed Sardar Attique Muhammad Khan as prime minister and elected Sardar Yaqub in his place, marks another break with the past. Sardar Attique, who had in recent weeks become an increasingly controversial figure, was known as a supporter of former president Pervez Musharraf. He had also been accused of corruption. His ouster came about as a forward bloc within his own Muslim Conference joined hands with opposition parties to deliver an overwhelming vote of no confidence. In the 49-member house, 31 backed the vote and only 15 opposed it. The incoming prime minister has been warmly welcomed by Prime Minister Gilani and indeed other figures in the federal government. The buzz in Muzaffarabad is that the entire move was orchestrated by Islamabad. Sardar Atique has made similar accusations himself and warned of instability in the affairs of AJK as a result of all that has happened. Events similar to the ones we see now have taken place in the past too. Politics in AJK are frequently dominated by accusations of corruption or mismanagement. The theme of manipulation from Islamabad and accusations of horse-trading have also been heard before. The happenings are significant too in the context of Pakistan’s wider political scenario. The PML-N, despite its undisguised dislike for Musharraf and his men, has indicated it disapproves of intervention in AJK and believes this will complicate matters regarding the future of Kashmir.

We must acknowledge that the claim Pakistan makes of AJK being an independent territory is largely a piece of fiction. Even if the statement by the Muslim Conference forward bloc leaders, that the federal government in Pakistan played no part in recent events there, is accepted as true, the fact is that many of the affairs of the troubled territory are controlled by persons and groups based in Pakistan. The no-confidence move against a prime minister has for this reason sparked controversy in AJK. The role of Pakistan in the management of the territory is opposed by many Kashmiris who most of all yearn to determine their own destiny. Indeed, even outside Kashmir, there has been concern over the alleged intervention of the federal government in provincial matters. The Punjab government remains suspicious of a conspiracy against it. The prime minister of Pakistan and his team must keep as a priority on their list the need to set good, democratic precedents in all areas. The developments in Azad Kashmir are a reminder of this. Pakistan has long lacked such traditions. It badly needs them if it is to make a clean break with a past where democratic rule has frequently been disturbed by uncalled for attempts to subvert parliamentary supremacy. 

[editorial note-The News-Jan 8, 2009]

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Political change in AJK

AZAD Jammu and Kashmir Prime Minister Sardar Attique Ahmed Khan was removed from office through a no-confidence motion on Tuesday. He was replaced by Sardar Muhammad Yaqoob Khan who took oath the same day. This is the first time that a prime minister has been forced to give up office by means of a no-confidence motion and has implications for the future political trajectory of the valley. Though the party All Jammu and Kashmir Muslim Conference Mr Attique belongs to is one of the largest and enjoys popular support, it were the differences within the party and the creation of a forward block to which the incumbent belongs that led to his government's removal. Resentment against him had been brewing for some time. It was alleged in the resolution that while doing nothing to further the Kashmir cause, he had turned a blind eye to administrative tasks. He rejected these charges as baseless and complained that Islamabad had a hand in his toppling. Jammu and Kashmir People's Party president Sardar Khalid Ibrahim Khan tendered his resignation from the assembly's membership maintaining that the PPP at the centre had a hand in it. The charge should be probed.

The no-confidence motion was carried out in accordance with the constitution. Sardar Attique greeted the new prime minister setting a good tradition of parliamentary behaviour. It is hoped that the new set-up would undertake economic uplift in AJK that in large part remains mired in poverty.

[editorial note-The Nation-Jan 8, 2009]

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Political intrigue in AJK

FOR a region that figures so prominently in Pakistan’s national imagination, the goings-on in the Azad Jammu and Kashmir Legislative Assembly barely registered on the national radar. On Tuesday, Prime Minister Sardar Attique Ahmed Khan was unseated by a forward bloc of his ruling Muslim Conference that linked up with opposition parties, including the People’s Party of Azad Jammu and Kashmir (the local PPP). The vote in the 49-seat assembly was denounced by Sardar Attique, who accused the federal government in Islamabad of orchestrating his ouster. However, the truth is more complex. The prime minister’s downfall began when he alienated a faction of the MC supported by Sardar Sikandar Hayat Khan, former prime minister and president of AJK. The complaints of the MC rebels read like a typical political chargesheet: corruption, inefficiency, arbitrary decision-making, sidelining the cabinet, spending too much time away from the capital, etc. Were it not for the rebel group, Sardar Attique’s government, which had a comfortable majority in the AJK assembly, would have faced no threat.

Yet it is also apparent that the no-confidence vote succeeded because the PPAJK, which has seven seats, supported it. In the end, the 25 votes (32 including the PPAJK) mustered by Mr Attique’s opponents were numerically enough in the 49-seat assembly, but it was the PPAJK’s addition that had a galvanising effect on the opposition. Aware of the PPAJK’s role, the pro-Attique camp lashed out on Jan 4 against unnamed federal ministers for attempting to “topple the elected Muslim Conference government through horse trading, coercion and inducement”. The rivalry between the

MC and the PPAJK, the two largest parties in Pakistan-administered Kashmir, is old, but intensified in 2006 when the Musharraf regime supported the MC and helped it capture a majority in the July election.

The regime is also believed to have encouraged a split in the PPAJK, which came to pass when Barrister Sultan Mahmood set up the People’s Muslim League and won four seats in the election. Since the election the PPAJK regularly vowed to bring down the ‘corrupt regime’ of the MC, something it has now helped achieve — although another faction of the MC will still head the government. All of this may seem par for the course in Pakistani politics. But with a democratic dispensation in Islamabad, the extent of the federal government’s influence on AJK politics needs to be questioned as well as whether or not this is aiding liberal politics in Kashmir.

[editorial note-Dawn-Jan 8, 2009]

Posted on 08 Jan 2009 by Webmaster