Grassroots power

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The rollback of local democracy is not a new phenomenon in Pakistan. All political parties have an unenviable record when it comes to the execution of the constitutional provision concerning local governments and the sharing of power with local representatives. The PTI administration is no exception. It is unfortunate to see a party that promised to strengthen local democracy dragging its feet on its commitment since coming into power and delaying the holding of elections. Its reticence has also been criticised by the ECP. On Thursday, two Supreme Court judges hearing the LG poll case made similarly pertinent observations concerning the premature dissolution of local governments in Punjab by the PTI government and the inordinate delay in holding new polls as required by the Constitution. According to Justice Qazi Faez Isa, such an act is tantamount to “killing democracy”. “This is unconstitutional and worse than dictatorship,” he remarked, wondering “Would you throw away entire local government system if you don’t get favourable results tomorrow and an opposition party sweeps the elections?” Giving his observations on the issue, Justice Maqbool Baqar pointed out that the government was “at war with its people”. The remarks of the learned judges underscore the gross violation of Article 140-A of the Constitution that binds provinces to establish LG systems and devolve political, administrative and financial responsibility and authority to the elected representatives of the local bodies.
The judges through their observations also gave voice to the frustration of the people with the excuses of the ruling party and its allies for the last two years for delaying local elections in Punjab, KP and Balochistan. When the PTI dissolved the PML-N-dominated local governments in Punjab in 2019, for example, it introduced a new local body law, which, its authors claimed, aimed at ensuring meaningful devolution of political, administrative and financial authority down to the grassroots level. Unfortunately, the new law was used only to roll back local democracy in the province instead of transferring the promised powers to people elected at the lowest tier of government. This disregard for grassroots democracy must be censured. With the popularity of the PTI having suffered significantly because of poor governance and its bad performance on the economic front, its reluctance to hold local body polls is understandable. This observation also holds true for the PPP provincial authorities in Sindh that are averse to devolving power. But the question is: how long can they avoid the voters?