The Sindh Government has restored the commissionerate system in Sindh by repealing the Local Government Order of 2001, Police Order of 2002 replacing it by Local Bodies Act of 1974 and the Police Act of 1861. When the British left India, they claimed that their colonial system will be never replaced by independent India and Pakistan because their subjects will never be able to find a better system to maintain law and order. Why has the provincial government not hold a referendum on the subject of local governments before changing it?
The local government system envisaged under General Musharraf had its flaws but was not just devolution but also decentralisation of power from the provincial government to the local government. Some of the responsibility of provincial governments was also assigned to localise the three tier government system which envisages the implement ion of the will of people at grass root level through elected councils and it is also a nursery for future politician.
The MQM has rejected the commission create system calling it anti-people, dictatorial and autocratic which will take power away from the local governments and will empower the bureaucracy which is not accountable to the people. The question is whether the commissioner ate system can be more beneficial to the local government in bringing the social change in the lives of ordinary people and maintaining the law and order, when undoubtedly the commiserate system is based on a strong central institution where (as in federal system)?
Why are all the major political parties, except the MQM, in favour of the commisionerate system? The reason given by the provincial governments of PML(N), PPP and the ANP is that the local government system introduced by the military dictator, General Musharraf, was to be used by the Nazims as his political force to support his rule which is true to some extent as his party APML is depending on these Nazims.
The rejection of all political parties has more to do with electoral politics because the major political parties are yet to have a strong well-organised structure at the grassroots level. It is strange that the PPP that claims to be the party of the masses is not keen to empower the people at the grassroots level.
S T HUSSAIN
Lahore
