Pakistan’s major political forces raise the slogan of ‘democracy’ to come into power, and later these champions of democracy forget what democracy is and why did people vote them.
In any proper democracy in the world, there are three hierarchical systems;
1- The first-tier government is the federal.
2-The second-tier government is the provincial.
3-The last, but not the least, is the local government bodies.
Unfortunately, the third-tier; the guarantor of grass-root-level government; has been contentious in Pakistan since 2008. Presumably this is the reason why the genuine democracy does not endure in Pakistan, owing to the fact that rulers always sing the mantra of democracy yet they do not want to enact the grass-root system of democracy just because the devolution of power to the lower level lawmakers.
However, it is mesmerizing and ironic that only the governments under military leadership devised local bodies system in the country under miscellaneous tags to stay at the helm of affairs. Gen Pervez Musharraf had reinstated the latest local government system in 2001, and we all observed the stable hierarchy of a democratic system. Subsequently, Musharraf’s local-bodies system emerged as a key catalyst in Karachi. Under the same local body system, entire country witnessed how city mayors from Jamaat-e-Islami, Naimatullah Khan and Syed Mustafa Kamal from Muttahida Qaumi Movement worked for the betterment and progress of thriving Karachi.
Why do we need local bodies system?
Since 2008, two democratic governments have come into power but sad to say, both have failed to implement the local governments in the country in defiance of repeated promises. The so-called defenders of democracy; PPP — which always boasts mandate under the slogan of democracy, terms that it sacrificed a lot for the sake of democracy and PML-N — which assures all the time that it won’t let anyone derail democracy, are violating the norms of democracy by suppressing the grass-root democratic governance. Contrary to this, democracy’s champions reintroduced the incongruous and obsolete commissionerate system, and the mantra of democracy eventually culminated with empowerment of bureaucrats instead of common people. Although, commissionerate system is an archaic British era system, however Britain has already ruled-out this system and enforced a local-government system according to the needs of a modern society.
Nowadays, we — Karachiites especially, are facing a load miseries since water scarcity in our neighborhoods. The second-tier government has totally missed the mark to combat severe shortfall of water supplies and commissioner’s tall claims have gone down the city’s troublesome drains. Tanker mafia is being patronized by some government forces and for the reason of the current scarcity of potable water, they are supplying water-tankers at pretty high rates. When we infer the latest scenario, we can envision that the deadly clashes can be erupted in future, if government doesn’t fix this issue.
The lack of trust among law enforcement agencies and indigenous people of Karachi is one of the issues, the rationale is that majority of law enforcers are non-locals and hence communication gap can be witnessed. So, how can we subdue this gap? The answer is, local police system which can be promulgated via local-bodies system to shun the further catastrophe.
PML-Q, MQM, PTI and other small political parties have asserted that they want the local-bodies system, although PTI-led K-P government still could not impose this system after 1 year notwithstanding Imran Khan’s 90 days promises.
PPP and PML-N, both signed the clause 10 of the “Charter of Democracy” and Article 140-A, which was introduced in the constitution through 18th amendment, which emphasizes and reinforces the government to hold local body polls and establish local-government to empower common people. Unfortunately, regardless of all efforts, still no form of local government system has been imposed and it has been relegated to the dustbin of history.
The question is; why does Karachi need local government system? The reason is that the people want such an independent system which is comprised of residents of the area in view of the fact that those representatives better know the problems than outsiders, and can interpret their issues more efficiently.
The local bodies system is the only way through which we can empower indigenous people of Karachi to sort out their problems at grass root level and without that, Karachi and other metropolitan cities will not only suffer but will also deteriorate in infrastructure and civic facilities.
