A few weeks back, Federal Minister for Information Fawad Chaudhry admitted that delaying fresh elections for local governments (LGs) was a mistake on the part of the PTI government. He added that such elections should have been held within the first year of the PTI’s government.
Later, he confessed that the current chief ministers of the provinces are resisting the restoration of LGs. The federal minister should be lauded for stating the truth. The reality is that almost all provincial governments, MNAs, MPAs, and the district administrations manned by the officers of the Pakistan Administrative Service (PAS), indirectly or directly, resist the establishment of local bodies as per the constitution for fear of becoming irrelevant to local politics and losing their clout in promoting their vested interests.
It is pertinent to mention that the Supreme Court (SC) had ordered the Punjab government to restore the local government system by October 20 and also summonedthe incumbent and former chief secretaries on the next date to answer why they failed to implement the court’s decision delivered in March 2021.
Our constitution envisages a three-tier system of governance which comprises governments on the local, provincial and federal levels. But it is a regrettable reality that the country has mostly been run on a two-tier system made up of the provincial and federal levels. Even more painful is the fact that elected governments paid no attention to this constitutional obligation, and it is ironic that the country saw powerful local governments when it was being governed by military dictators.
