HYDERABAD: A veteran Baloch nationalist leader and former parliamentarian Manzoor Gichki has said that Pakistan needs a new social contract because the 18th Amendment could not solve Balochistan`s problems.

He said the current unrest in Balochistan was largely due to the fact that no one delivered the goods there, adding that important questions were attached with the China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) in the backdrop of peculiar conditions in Balochistan.

Speaking to journalists at a tea party hosted in his honour at the local press club on Tuesday, he said basic facilities continued to elude Balochistan. No development took place there and that was the main reason that Balochistan witnessed unrest and insurgency.

He said provision of drinking water and health facilities were petty things, yet they were non-existent there to date.

`Balochistan accepted the 18th Amendment under protest. I strongly believe all kinds of resources under the sea or on the surface belong to provinces. The federation can collect taxes from the provinces for running its affairs instead of giving some share to the provinces and keeping the rest with it,` he said.

He said the Constitution focused on Punjab as far as its articles relating to finances were concerned. `This Constitution makes the Centrethe real boss,` he said. Not only Saindak, but all projects were meaningless in this situation. The tariffs for gas of Punjab and that of Sindh or Balochistan were different, he said, adding that Punjab`s gas was four times as expensive as that of Sindh and Balochistan. He said he had remained part of parliament merely as a `witness` because with only five to six members on his side, his voice never mattered.

`Actually Pakistan is a multi-nation state so it can be a loose federation or a confederation.

Pakistan can`t afford these conflicts now,` he remarked. Pakistan was faced with severe isolation and it was only China that supported it in this region.

He said he had presented 200 amendments to the Constitution, but neither the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) nor the Pakistan Muslim LeagueNawaz (PML-N) took them up while ruling the country. He explained that many articles of the Constitution were in conflict with each other.

He said a new social contract would have to be signed by politicians and added that the situation in Balochistan did not improve even during Dr Abdul Malik`s rule as a cave with hundreds of human bodies was discovered then.

He conceded that the Baloch leadership itself did not show political acumen and only cosmetically raised issues of rights. He said he did not oppose CPEC, but he refused to accept it in totality.

He raised questions like where the revenue generated through CPEC projects would go and if there would be demographic changes. He stated that if people from Chakwal were to be settled then Balochistan would be witnessing insurgency against such developments.He said Pakistan had been misgoverned in 35 years of military rule, but in the past 15 years of civilian rule, politicians also left no stone unturned in destroying the country economically and politically. He said the recent Panama case verdict clearly indicated the scale of corruption, adding that Balochistan was also hit by corruption.

Accusing the civil-military establishment, bureaucracy and politicians of looting the country, Mr Gichki stated that the dimension of corruption in Balochistan had changed. He said initially the army alone used to be blamed for bad governance, but over the past 15 years, civilian leaders also failed to maintain distance from corruption.

The middle class, he said, crossed all the limits. Earlier, he said, wealth used to be deposited in bank, but now money was being recovered from water tanks. He asked as to who was actually behind that corruption as it could not be done single-handedly.

He maintained that a recent audit revealed that Rs28 billion remained unaccounted for out of Rs80bn. He alleged that lands were just doled out at throwaway prices among near and dear ones and projects were plagued by kickbacks in Balochistan.

In fact, he said, after getting independence from colonial rule, Pakistan had never been an independent state. Its foreign policy did not meet expectations of people and similar was the case with the economy.

He asked what good could be expected from a government that could not provide safe drinking water to its people and women had to cover long distances to fetch water.