EDITORIAL: Ruling parties in the provinces jealously guard autonomy the 18th Amendment grants them, but when it comes to devolution of power to the third tier of government, a common tendency is to concentrate power in their own hands. In a latest development, the Sindh government bulldozed the Sindh Local Government (Amendment) Bill, 2021, through the provincial assembly in the absence of opposition legislators who had staged a walkout to protest several provisions of the bill devised to further diminish local bodies’ ability to resolve local problems through local structures. Deprived of any say in such vital matters as education, healthcare and the affairs of the Sindh Building Control Authority, their functions have been reduced to sanitation and garbage disposal. The provincial government also reserves the right to rein in pesky LGs with a mere notification. This is a travesty of the very concept of devolution of power to the grassroots.
Even such weakened bodies are unacceptable to the ruling Pakistan People’s Party (PPP). For an apparently inexplicable reason, mayors and deputy mayors are to be elected through secret ballot rather than the previous method of open voting. More importantly, the new legislation stipulates that district municipal corporations in urban centres are to be subdivided into smaller units. It is easy to see the reason behind these changes considering that the opposition parties dominate the electoral scene in the two big cities, Karachi and Hyderabad, whilst the PPP has an edge over them only in rural areas. The estimated current (disputable) population of metropolitan Karachi is 16,459,000 and that of Hyderabad 1,850,000. Hence, as per the bill, metropolitan corporations are to consist of just over 5 million people; municipal corporations between 300,000 to 5 million; and town corporations 500,000 to 750,000. The size gets further smaller and smaller for municipal and union committees. These subdivisions seem to be aimed at preventing any one opposition party to emerge as the winner in a big city, particularly in the megapolis of Karachi, and claim to represent its people, giving hard time to the ruling party in the provincial capital.
No wonder the opposition parties are up in arms against the local government bill. Speaking at his party’s workers convention in Karachi, PTI leader Asad Umar lambasted the bill, saying among other things, the “mayor is not supposed to run health and education system of the city. This is not fair and we cannot accept it.” Referring to a petition filed by his party in the Supreme Court for bringing in a system of effective, powerful and resourceful local bodies in the country, he appealed to the Chief Justice of Pakistan Gulzar Ahmad to take up the petition on an urgent basis. That may or may not happen before the upcoming local bodies’ election. In any event, the provincial government would be wise to recognise that there is no point in having local governments which have no administrative control over matters affecting the lives of their electors.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2021
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