Politics at grass root level
With the ECP having announced the schedule for Local Government elections at the insistence of the Supreme Court, a race has begun between the parties. First to take place will be the polls in 43 cantonment areas across the country on April 25. These will be held on non party basis on account of the federal government’s failure to amend the Cantonment Act 1924. The PML-N government did not want to ruffle the army’s feathers which is supposedly sensitive to the elected civilians’ interference in the matters of the boards despite the preponderance of the civilian population in major cantonments. Thus an anomaly has been created as the Local Government polls in the rest of the country would be on party basis.
The LG polls provide the parties a chance to organise their units at the grass roots. Presently the parties do not have units below tehsil/taluqa levels. The polls also provide the starry-eyed politicians fascinated by mega projects a reality check, forcing them to take note of the common man’s urgent concerns. With the cantonment boards polls scheduled at the end of next month, Shahbaz Sharif has issued urgent orders to government departments to immediately arrange funds for PML-N’s prospective candidates to start development schemes in these localities. While the realisation of the importance of union council level development is welcome, the Opposition is likely to approach the courts to stop the disbursement of funds to the nominees of the PML-N alone.
KP will hold Local Government polls soon after on May 30; Nawaz Sharif is therefore scheduled to address a workers convention in Peshawar next week. Despite having a reputation of meeting Cabinet Ministers only rarely, he has decided to interact with lower level party leaders and listen to the workers’ grievances which, again, is a positive development. The move has been necessitated by the formation of the tripartite alliance between PPP, ANP and JUI-F to jointly contest the elections in KP under one symbol. Thus while the basic elections pose challenges to the parties, they also offer them opportunities to strike roots.