If a dictator gives people a voice, should you silence the voice because it was installed by a dictator? The Pakistani People’s Party, the holder’s of the first democratically elected civilian administration since the coup of General Musharaff in 1999, on Thursday swept away a whole level of democracy when it decided to abolish local government. Prime Minister Yousaf Gilani justified the move saying the security situation meant the state could not run elections due in August, and that local government was constitutionally illegal anyway. But others say the administrations were dumped on party political grounds, while some fear the end of low-level representation will leave the administration of towns and cities to unaccountable appointees who will know nothing, and care nothing for, their fiefdoms.
Under the local government system, towns, cities and districts were administered under several different levels by elected nazims – equivalent to mayors. Under the changes announced last week, these will be replaced with the executive magistracy – unelected bureaucrats. The nazim’s party affiliations don’t reflect the current political landscape in Pak and some parties are to be hit harder than others by the move. Despite the PPP being the single largest party in the Sindh Assembly, out of the 23 districts in the province it has just one nazim, the Daily Times said. The PML-Q and its allies cleaned up everywhere else, except in Karachi and Hyderabad where the MQM run the shop. The PML-N suffered a similar fate in Punjab. The Daily Times piece says the PPP, which has failed to gain a foothold in the districts districts, hated the system because it had no power within it. It suggests that, with its abolition, the party would now lean on officials to appoint bureaucrats favourable to themselves.
Officially, however, the PPP and PML-N’s dislike of LG stems from its establishment under the auspices of the Musharaff government. According to the National Reconstruction Bureau nazims came to power only in 2001, with the most recent elections held in 2005. Some may argue local government, put in place while provincial assemblies themselves were out of action by order, gave Musharaff better democratic credentials than he deserved. Gilani, according to the News, said LG was installed “illegally and unconstitutionally” and usurped the power of the then-suspended provinces. Indeed, Gilani has elsewhere said the business of local government is the business of the assemblies and not the federal constitution. Which may have been the case, but did not stop all parties – not just those aligned with Musharaff - taking part in apparently free and fair polls at the time, as Sohail Mahmood notes.
Whatever the constitutional illegality of the system, Gilani has abolished a level of direct representation and replaced it with no equivalent. If LG needed reform, why wipe the slate before the provinces were ready to set up new institutions? Until the latter is done, the job of administration will be taken away from those who know and understand the area they run to bureaucrats from potentially any damn place. SwERveUT of Metblogs says the executive magistrates “are unlikely to know an area’s problems well, and will have a tendency to rule with an upper hand like his personal jagir – which basically gives him power over anyone else”.
That may not happen in practice – but without elections and the chance to kick them out by the ballot box why would anyone think otherwise? And if the Daily Times report is true, the system may truly only been dumped out of inconvenience to the PPP and to expand their political largess, rather than any higher constitutional principle. As the Karachi poet Jamiluddin Aali said:
A nazim is answerable to people but the administrator would be answerable only to his appointer
July 11, 2009 at 18:27
Great post-
I agree with the fact that abolishing something unconstitutional and replacing it with something “undemocratic” is in of itself ridiculous. I can’t help but also think this may relate to a state’s desire to hold control of the center by centralizing governance further. Given that Pakistan is is highly decentralized (power shifted to the provinces), do you think this could have been a possible motivation?
July 11, 2009 at 18:46
But if it was a move to move power to the centre, why not do away with the provinces as well? What they’ve ended up with is a mess – an executive magistracy guided from the centre running local affairs but with provincial assemblies mopping up the rest. Ideally the various parties should have sat down and knocked out a full plan for local governance – but it’s now even less clear than it was before.
Pak is not alone is mucking around with local government for political ends here. The tories in the UK were notorious in the 1980s for abolishing administrations they didn’t like because they were labour dominated, or left wing. As a result London had no effective coordinating government for more than a decade, and the big conurbations still don’t. Closer to home the Conservatives put off and put off establishing an Assembly for Wales for years, leaving the Welsh Office – set up to prepare the road to Welsh government in 1960s and in control of our schools, local government, hospitals and all sorts – to become a training ground for toady Tories climbing up the food chain. Who generally weren’t Welsh.
It helps to know that, at the time, a Welsh Assembly would have meant a Labour government in Cardiff.
July 19, 2009 at 23:59
the initial LG 2001 governments were not as blatantly poliicised as the second round of ones. Many PPP stalwarts contested and won the 01 elections it was when Musharraf and his quislings went for broke after 002 things got messy. In itself when you had self sustaining zila nazims like in karachi and lahore it did some good..in other areas it was a total waste