EDITORIAL: The Supreme Court (SC) has delivered a rebuke to the Punjab government (and thereby the federal government) by holding Section 3 of the Punjab Local Government Act (PLGA) 2019, whereby the local governments (LGs) were dissolved before completing their tenure as ultra vires of the Constitution, especially Article 140-A. The SC has in its short order (detailed judgement to follow) restored the dissolved LGs until their term expires in December 2021. The reason underlying the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaaf (PTI) government’s convolutions in first passing the PLGA 2019 to dissolve the existing LGs with fresh elections to follow in six months, then extending it to 21 months through the PLGA 2020, and inviting the ire of the SC by issuing an Ordinance on the issue two days after the prorogation of the Punjab Assembly, is the fact that these LGs were heavily loaded in favour of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N). When questioned by the SC regarding all these twists and turns and whether LGs elections were to be held soon, the court was told the delay was due to the Covid-19 pandemic. But the court flummoxed the Punjab Additional Advocate General who had made this argument by asking the rhetorical question whether the elections in Gilgit-Baltistan had been held during the pendency of the pandemic. The embarrassed official then pleaded that the matter was now in the Council of Common Interests (CCI) and the government be given time to hold fresh elections. When asked whether LGs elections were being held in the remaining provinces, Attorney General Khalid Jawed Khan said some provinces had objections to the census results. These convolutions too failed to impress the court however. Chief Justice of Pakistan Gulzar Ahmed reiterated the legal position that governments had the right to make new laws, confer powers, restructure the LGs, but not to dissolve them. He remarked that on the one hand the government wanted to devolve powers to the local level, and on the other had indulged in their unconstitutional dissolution. Interestingly, the Attorney General deposed before the court that Section 3 of PLGA 2019 brought back unpleasant memories of Article 58(2)(b), used to dismiss elected governments again and again. His colleague, the Additional Advocate General Punjab seemed less than pleased at the Attorney General’s remarks, but the court seemed to find them reinforcement of its view that the whole construct and practice of the government on the issue was unconstitutional.
It may be too early to speculate what effect the decision could have on the Punjab government of Chief Minister Usman Buzdar, especially since even after restoration, the Punjab LGs only have about nine months’ tenure remaining. Nevertheless, the SC has sent a clear and unequivocal message, not only to the PTI government, but to all governments, present and future, regarding the political and constitutional necessity of ensuring LGs are duly elected and not dismissed or dissolved according to the whims and wishes of governments. This has been the unfortunate pattern of behaviour of many of our civilian elected governments, reluctant as they have been to share power with the LGs and retain undue advantage for the provincial governments. This case has highlighted this expedient tendency, hopefully leading to the closing of the door to arbitrary, illegal and unconstitutional tampering with the existence and tenure of the LGs as the bottom rung of the democratic structure. Military dictators, ironically, have favoured LGs, but for malign reasons too: bypassing the political parties and trying to create a ‘direct’ base of support at the mass level. But even this does not justify the ‘step-motherly’ treatment meted out to LGs in democratic episodes. It goes without saying that the principle of devolution of power, in which the LGs hold an important place, is intended to bring government and service delivery closer to the ordinary citizen and free him of the bureaucracy that has far too often filled the vacuum whenever LGs are dissolved, to the detriment of the citizens’ rights. Let us hope the SC’s verdict will help us put this sorry history behind us and construct the LGs anew as the repositories of devolved, local power to better serve the otherwise hapless citizen.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2021
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