As the Punjab government prepares for local government (LG) elections, to be held before come June, its key ally the PML-Q has expressed reservations about the province's LG law. Moonis Elahi, a prominent leader of the party and son of Punjab Assembly Speaker Pervaiz Elahi, has been reported as saying that before the announcement of the polls schedule, the government should first amend the law to remove its 'flaws'. Identifying a 'flaw', he said, the number of LG units, already significantly large, is being further expanded with induction of more than 24,000 panchayats (village councils) and neighbourhood councils, which would raise administrative expense six times over. Referring to successful implementing of a similar law in KP, he contended that Punjab could not be compared with that province because of the difference in the size of population. Elahi seemed to be so serious about the issue that he stated his party might not participate in the LG polls if "such flaws" persisted.
His assertions carry little weight. First of all, it needs to be recalled that the law, finalized with the approval of the provincial cabinet and the Prime Minister, was announced last year by none other than a Q League leader, Raja Basharat, who at the time was the provincial minister for Local Government and Community Development. If it was so defective, the party should have taken a stand then rather than now. Secondly, since the idea is empowerment of the people at the grass roots, administrative expenses should not matter as long the money is spent on their uplift. What may be worrying the Q League and other political parties is that under the new law, although elections for town/tehsil and district councils are to be held on political parties' platforms, elections to panchayats and neighbourhood councils are to be conducted on non-party basis. Also, these bodies will be answerable to a common assembly comprising all voting age persons of an area, thereby allowing communities to make inclusive decisions about local issues and concerns at the local level. This may not sit well with local influentials for losing dominance, and the political parties because those elected on non-party basis, as seen in the erstwhile Fata, tend to align themselves with the ruling party - in this case the PTI. In the general elections, however, a majority of the people vote on party basis.
Unfortunately, political parties are very vocal about devolution of power from the centre to the provinces, but averse to decentralization at the provincial level. For long, democratically-elected governments in the provinces - with the exception of PTI-ruled KP - kept resisting LG elections on one pretext or another. And when these bodies were finally revived on the repeated orders of the apex court, new laws were enacted to render them powerless. The present case is different, however. In raising the objections he raised, the Q League leader could be throwing his weight to have better terms of power sharing for his party with the PTI both at the centre and in Punjab. The League is not going to stay out of the upcoming elections, but it is bad for its own image to criticise the new law for letting the people at the third tier of governance make decisions suited to their respective needs.
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