Motives Behind the Abolition of Local Bodies in Balochistan

By Amjad Hussain

The patriarch-dominant Balochistan Assembly has ultimately got its last eight-year-long dream materialized with the passage of a bill by the house to dissolve the local bodies and appoint administrators in districts and towns/tehsils across the province vice district and tehsil nazims. The concurrence of all the members to dislodge nazims and their venom against the form of local bodies, which had been receiving a warm-welcome from the poor stratum of society in Balochistan, was well-evident from the fact that the bill did not face any divergence of stance from even a single member of the house. The bill named “Balochistan Local Government (Amendment) Act, 2010″ has now been forwarded to the governor for his sanction.

The Act provides for deletion of the sub-section (4) of Section 150 of Balochistan Local Government Ordinance 2001 which called for holding of local governments elections every four year to enable its formation on the 14th day of August of the year in which elections are held. The Act also got another “Sub-section – B” inserted in Section 179 of the Ordinance which calls for dissolution of all local bodies on the date to be notified by the provincial government and thereby removal of nazims, naib nazims and members of district, town and union councils from their respective offices. It also empowers the provincial government to appoint administrators in districts and towns/tehsils vice nazims and restricts it to hold local councils’ elections within a year. While introducing the bill in the provincial assembly, the government described the existing form of the local bodies as non-conducive to holding of fair and transparent elections and termed it imperative to replace nazims with administrators to ensure impartiality in the upcoming local bodies elections.

Balochistan cabinet, in its last meeting in Quetta on December 24, had already decided to appoint district coordination officers and executive district officers (revenue) as administrators vice district and tehsil nazims respectively across the province.  It had also directed the district governments to get their last eight years records completed for audit. The cabinet, however, linked the implementation of these decisions to its ratification by the provincial assembly which was finally carried out on January 9. The decision came with no surprise as chief minister Nawab Aslam Raisani had frequently been describing the local bodies a hurdle in the way of maintaining law and order in the province. Likewise, members of his cabinet and the parties forming the coalition government in Balochistan had also been expressing their grievances against the local bodies and were quite ambitious to dismantle the system. Most of other political parties in Balochistan had also been antagonistic to this system and wanted to get it wrapped up at the earliest, though almost all of these political parties had fielded their candidates in both the apolitical local bodies’ elections in 2001 and 2005 in Balochistan and some of them even conquered their opponents in those polls.

Unfortunately, in our country most of the political parties and their leaders always try to curry favour with the despots when they are at the pinnacle of their power to secure their interests at the cost of their so-called principles. The same parties start blaming the same despots for all evils and wrongdoings later when grip of the rulers on government begins to wane or they are ousted from power corridors. It would be no denial of fact that relations of the political parties with the rulers in Pakistan are based more on personal interests of their leadership than their principles or well-being of people. Perhaps this is the reason that these political parties are fast losing their credibility among the masses with each passing day and people are no more willing to trust them.

When the present form of local bodies was introduced in Pakistan back in 2001 most of the political parties of the country had supported this system, overtly or covertly, and fully participated in local bodies’ elections. The two major political parties of the country – PPP Parliamentarians and PML (Nawaz) – also put their weight behind the system which ultimately led to insertion of Article 10 in the Charter of Democracy signed by late Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif on May 15, 2006 in London. The Article reads as, “Local bodies election will be held on party basis through provincial election commissions in respective provinces and constitutional protection will be given to the local bodies to make them autonomous and answerable to their respective assemblies as well as to the people through regular courts of law”. Local bodies have also been provided with a protection shield by Article 140-A of the 1973 constitution which states, “Each province shall, by law, establish a local government system and devolve political, administrative and financial responsibility and authority to the elected representatives of the local governments”.

Ex-president Pervez Musharraf had also given it a constitutional protection under sixth schedule of the constitution barring the provinces to make any change in local government laws until December 31, 2009 and thereafter with the prior approval of the president. President Zardari, however, deleted all the four local government laws pertaining to the four provinces of Pakistan from the schedule on the very same day of December, thereby, allowing the federating units to make changes in local government laws according to their peculiar needs and circumstances.

Conversely, local government representatives in Balochistan headed by former chairman national reconstruction bureau Daniyal Aziz have vehemently opposed the Balochistan government’s move to abolish the local bodies and held a rally in Quetta on Thursday (14 January) to protest against the Act. Daniyal Aziz termed the Act as contrary to Article 140-A of the constitution and demanded of judiciary to take cognizance of violation of the constitution. He called upon Balochistan government to utilize its energy and resources to sort out other issues of the province including provincial autonomy, recovery of missing people and Taliban Shura instead of wasting it on abolition of local bodies.

The questions now arise as to why the former military dictator provided constitutional protection to this new-born local government system. What harms has this system caused to the provincial governments in Pakistan over the last eight years? Why the provincial governments and most of the political parties were so adverse to this form of local government despite the fact that it was gaining much popularity among general public? As far as Balochistan is concerned, the provincial government and political parties here are repugnant to this system as they are of the view that it had been introduced by a military dictator to manipulate politics at grass roots level to pursue his own political agenda. They also blame the local governments for being a source of corruption. The provincial government attributes the deteriorating law and order situation in Balochistan to the same system. But, is it rationale to wind up a system which is beneficial to most of the masses on the sole justification that its introducer is disliked by many a political parties and their leaders and that too in a situation when the introducer is no more in power to have his own vested interests secured? Is it justified to blame the local governments for escalating terrorist acts, target killings and attacks on national installations across the province when the provincial government itself is incapable of managing its affairs and getting down to negotiations and mending its fences with militants to ensure peace in the province?

Can the political parties justify the abolition of local governments by leveling the charges of corruption against them when they themselves have been involved in misappropriating billions of rupees during their own tenure? In fact, the provincial government and political parties in Balochistan are mainly dominated by tribal leaders and chieftains who can never accept the supremacy of nazims in districts. They can never see the public-friendly nazims addressing fundamental problems of people as it makes citizens no more dependent on them for solution of their basic problems of water, sanitation, sewerage, road and drainage system. These political parties and tribal chiefs have always been craving for keeping the strings of people in their hands and to never let them free and in doing so they have the full cooperation of bureaucracy in general and of its district management group in particular as the group proved to be the worst sufferer of this local government system. Perhaps, this is the same mentality and psychology of the political parties and tribal chieftains which compelled Pervez Musharraf to provide a constitutional shield to this system by December 2009 to secure it from being tinkered with.

The ill intention of Balochistan government towards the local bodies is also gauged from the fact that the seats of administrators to be appointed vice district nazims have reportedly been distributed among the coalition partners in the provincial government. It has been reported that all the coalition partners have reached a consensus that the district nazims of their parties would be allowed to keep working as administrators in their respective districts of influence after the dissolution of local councils. The provincial assembly session was delayed by more than two hours on January 9, the day the Local Government Amendment Bill was introduced in the house, due to the same dispute as the government had first introduced a bill in the house wherein district nazims had to be replaced with government officials as administrators. But, the objection of coalition partners of PPP over the words “government officials” forced the PPP chief minister to introduce a new bill in the house within two hours with omission of these two words and replacement of district nazims with administrators not necessarily be a government official. It shows the double standard of the provincial government as on one hand while introducing the Local Government Act in the assembly it declares that fair elections could not be held in presence of the sitting district nazims, but on the other hand it is now going to appoint most of the same nazims as administrators in their respective districts.

True, the form of local government introduced by the former military dictator had certain shortcomings which adversely affected its performance over the last eight years, but it is not at all justified to scrape the whole system on which billions of rupees have been spent by declaring it a failure. Furthermore, if the parliamentary form of government in Pakistan could not show any performance in last 62 years, then how one can expect extra ordinary performance from the local governments in just eight years. It is an established fact that most of the people have heaved a sigh of relief after the introduction of local government not only in Balochistan but in the entire country as they had no more to stand in long queues all the day long outside deputy commissioners’ offices waiting for their turn to get a local/domicile certificate. They had not to wait long for their area MPAs and MNAs visit to their constituencies to requests them for construction of their drains and roads. They had just to move to their respective union council offices only a few yards away from their homes to get their birth, death, local/domicile certificates and other legal documents with exceptional ease. It is still not too late to mend; the provincial government should restore the previous form of local bodies in the best interest of people and should not implement its personal and political motives at the cost of public welfare and well-being.