After hearing a case about local government election, the Supreme Court asked the provincial government administration to submit the schedule of local bodies’ election.
It is not clear if the Supreme Court will take any action against provincials governments for not honouring the constitution, and avoiding holding the local body’s election on clumsy excuses and unfounded reasons during the last four years.
It is ironic that a democratically elected political government is always reluctant to hold local bodies’ election in time.
Why does the civilian government not want to empower the ordinary people at the grassroot level? Democracy will not be complete without local governments functioning.
Democracy with all it s weakness is still considered the best system of government, as it ensures the basic rights of people to elect their representative to rule them for a specific period of time. If the government fails to meet people’s aspirations and expectations, people remove the government with their vote after the tenure of the government ends which is five year in Pakistan.
Without local government, democracy is a sham, as it is not empowering the people at grassroots to from their government, to solve their problems related to civic services, roads, schools, health, sports activities, social welfare activities, matters related to lands ownership etc at district or town level.
During the last four years, the provincial government is depending on civil bureaucracy to manage the local government, instead of elected representatives.
The mindset of the bureaucracy is still shackled by pre-independence methodologies and hasn’t changed much. Its interest and loyalties are with the ruling elite class, and they consider the masses as commoners deserved to be ruled by a more sophisticated class of people of the people.
S T HUSSAIN
Lahore