Many mainstream political parties -- including PML-N, ANP and some quarters of PPP (provincial governments of both Sindh and Balochistan) -- are pressing to bring about changes in the local government system introduced by General Pervez Musharraf in 2001 through the Local Government Ordinance (LGO). Punjab government headed by PML-N is the first to show reservation for the local government system. It proposes the suspension of the system and appointment of non-political administrators in place of tehsil and district nazims.

But it seems the federal government is still not clear about the future of the system: President Asif Ali Zardari is waiting to be advised by Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani and also for a report from the Ministry of Law before he makes the final decision. Reportedly, on July 19, 2009, the PM advised the president to allow the provinces to amend the Local Government (LG) laws, hence permitting them to dissolve the system and appoint administrators in place of district nazims until fresh LG elections.

It must be pointed out here that the local government system is protected under the Sixth Schedule of the Constitution until December 2009. The tenure of the present local government will expire on October 17, 2009. The power to take a decision on the LG will automatically go to the provinces on January 1, 2010, that will be free to amend the system in accordance with their choices, without the federal government's approval. But provincial governments are not willing to let this system function for the next four months.

Punjab Law Minister Rana Sanaullah tells TNS, that there is a consensus among the four provinces over the fate of the LG -- "The provinces have agree to appoint administrators in place of nazims. They also agree that the next LG elections will be held within a year."

According to him, the local government system, introduced by a dictator, has become a symbol of corruption and political nepotism. "The current shape of the system is not practicable and requires drastic amendments. In fact, we want to benefit from the 1979 local bodies system," he says. Meanwhile, the Ministry of Law has promised to send the recommendations of the provinces to the president before August 7, 2009 --"so that the provinces can make amendments in their respective laws before August 14 (i.e. to dissolve the LG and appoint administrators). For the time being there is no progress on the issue," he confirms.

On the contrary, Muhammad Afzal Sindhu, Minister of State for Law and Justice, says: "No timeframe has been given for the submission of the report to the president. The ministry is yet to decide on the appointment of the administrators to replace the nazims. All provinces are onboard, but it is yet to be decided what will be the future course of action," he tells TNS.

However, district nazims and local governments' representatives have adopted a different stance. The focal person of the Association of District Nazims in Punjab, Major (retired) Tahir Sadiq, says the democratically elected government's decision to bulldoze a representative institution with a massive public mandate justified the acts of military dictators in the past. We see no difference between what happened on October 12, 1999 and now. Abolishment of LG will weaken the federation. The demands of new provinces will become justified. They should empower the LG representatives instead of sacking them in a dictatorial manner."

He further says that section 140(A) of the constitution clearly states that power can only be transferred to the elected institutions. "Punjab government has already approved a budget of Rs 84.5 million for new commissioners and other bureaucrats who will be replacing the district nazims." He adds that both PPP and PML-N had agreed under Article 10 of the Charter of Democracy that the local government would be autonomous.

He states that for the past two years the Punjab government has been accusing the local government of corruption but has not been able to prove it -- not even against a single nazim. "There are some reservations about audit reports in some districts but this does not make the whole system corrupt," he says.

Some PPP sources disclose that President Asif Zardari is not in favour of the appointment of non-political administrators; instead he awaits the schedule for the next local government elections. "PPP will not favour the appointment of non-political administrators for at least another year."

In Sindh, however, the MQM is strongly resisting the move and has challenged Chief Minister Qaim Ali Shah's order to ban the sale, purchase and lease of land by the district government of Karachi. The issue remains unresolved despite a series of meetings by a recently-constituted committee comprising members of PPP and MQM.

MQM's reluctance to endorse the abolition of the existing system of local governance has made it difficult for the PPP's Sindh leadership to implement the proposed appointment of administrators, says Haider Abbas Rizvi, MQM MNA.

According to him, there are many who accuse the local government of corruption and nepotism. "But MQM has delivered while remaining within the system. Karachi's nazim was declared the top three mayors of the world."

He does not believe that MQM is favouring the system because it will help the party to strengthen its hold in Karachi. "We have been demanding the government to hold elections as soon as possible, at least in those provinces where law and order situation is under control," he adds.

Salman Abid, political commentator and Regional Director Strengthening Participatory Organisation (SPO), says it is understandable why PML-N is so keen to abolish the system -- "because the party puts more trust in bureaucracy than in public representatives. A corrupt system is a mere excuse. The proposed amendments in the ordinance as recommended by PML-N will change the complexion of the system totally."

The PML-N proposed amendments include regaining the control of 12 departments devolved under 2001 ordinance while the number of councillor has also been reduced to 9 from 13. The party also proposes suspension of citizen community boards with the main focus on indirect election. Only 9 councillors would be elected through direct election while the rest through indirect elections. More significantly, PML-N proposes non-party elections of local governments for the next term.

The focus, asserts Abid, should be on making the current system more effective, and most political parties had decided to not disturb the political institutions under the Charter of Democracy. "The problem is that in Pakistan every elected representative from councillor to president wants his/her control on the development budget, so the powerful prevail, for good or bad, for democracy or not," he concludes.

The critique -- that the local government is essentially a creation of non-representative centre in order to gain a class of "collaborative politicians" -- apart, there is need to have an evaluation of the last local government ordinance.

The historical critique and structural questions about the entire system indeed remain relevant in a country like Pakistan; mainly because military governments take turn with civilian administrations, raising the structural questions yet again and leading to the undoing of the system.

It is in this historical backdrop that the local government ordinance 2001 must have been prepared. Ironically, it was another military government that took it upon itself the task of initiating a local government system that was supposed to be an improvement upon all the earlier ones. Once again the structural concerns were raised – since the new system was being devised at a time when the provincial and the federal structures were not yet elected – and hence the historical misgivings about the local governments remained.

No wonder we are in the present state of confusion where one system has been declared "dead" and the other is "powerless to be born". But the very fact that under the current setup, certain anomalies of the previous systems were attempted to be removed, the stakes to retain the system and reform it instead of abolishing it altogether are higher. Of course, the hue and cry is being raised by the stakeholders on both sides, and not the common people as one would have wished. Consequently, the president has not yet signed the summary sent to him about scrapping of the local governments and appointment of administrators instead.

To begin with, the present system includes some valuable improvements that need to be highlighted. It is an elected tier of government that makes the unelected bureaucracy accountable to the elected heads of district and tehsil governments. The ultimate decision maker is the elected Nazim who is answerable to his constituents as opposed to the district officer who reported to the provincial bureaucracy. Another positive achievement of this order remains the integration of urban and rural administrative areas which were hitherto kept distinct and led to the unequal flow of funds between the two (Ayub Khan benefited by empowering the local rural establishments while Ziaul Haq empowered the urban local governments).

Theoretically speaking, the present system envisaged devolution of power, decentralization of administrative authority, participation of people in community development through citizen community boards and village councils. The representation of women (enhanced to 33 percent), workers and peasants and minorities in all three councils was remarkable. For public order, the police was to be answerable to the district nazim.

Some of these theoretical assumptions were realised while others weren't.

Those that weren't, relate to the structural issues, as stated earlier. Thus the present local government system, like all previous ones, did not have constitutional protection. According to a research paper Local government Reform in Pakistan, "Despite the new local government structure Pakistan is constitutionally still a two-level federal state i.e. the local governments are not recognised as the third tier of government by the 1973 Constitution. The 17th Constitutional Amendment provides limited protection to the local governments for a period of only six years during which provinces can make changes to the local government legislation with the concurrence of the President."

The history of decentralisation in this country does not allow the political forces to trust or own up the local government as a necessary tier which could and should be used to further the cause of democracy. This very paper also notes that devolution, in this case, involved "a transfer of provincial powers and responsibilities to the district and lower levels of governments but interestingly enough, no decentralisation of any federal powers to either the provincial or local levels."

Obviously this led to a conflict between the province and the local tiers, a manifestation of which we have witnessed in the last eight years. What we see as a consequence is limited financial autonomy (the revenue collection of districts remains restricted) and partial devolution of powers. The accountability and monitoring of the system is flawed too.

Hence, a politically independent local tier remains a far-fetched idea. It has remained so because this time, too, the military government decided to hold the local government elections on a non-party basis. This time too the idea was to weaken the political system and the political parties. Expectedly, once in power, the political parties viewed the existing tier with suspicion and are trying to abolish it.

Until and unless there is consensus that we need local government for more democracy and this consensus is reflected in the country's constitution as well, no system will work here.

The News on Sunday: How important is a local government in a federal and democratic polity?

Ali Cheema: The literature is not completely conclusive on whether the countries that have adopted local government systems actually do better in terms of service delivery and so on. In Bolivia, some evidence has been produced which shows that after local governments got empowered, the allocation of money and the magnitude of spending increased and so did the efficiency of spending.

The real question is, what do you want to do with the local government? And I think, in Pakistan, some local government issues get mixed up with those of the federal government, because we have only four sub-national units -- which are the four provinces -- and then one of these provinces has a majority population. So, it's a very unbalanced demographic picture. Secondly, each of these provinces has sub-provincial areas that are fairly under-developed. For instance, you have the southern Punjab and upper Sindh. In some sense, you want to have a system of governance that can a)create a political ownership and b)create some accountability of a government -- not just of politicians -- at that level.

Hence, if you pose the question in that light, my own view would be that a democratic and empowered local government system should be retained in some form.

TNS: Historically, in Pakistan, the political governments have been somehow distrustful of the system and the dictators have almost always brought in the system. Comment.

AC: Well, if you talk about dictators, then it's understandable because the LG system weakens the parties. There are some positives in the last system, but where I depart from the supporters of the system is that there were a lot of design issues that were specifically brought in to ensure that personality politics becomes a central piece of the system. And that, I think, was very carefully done and designed in order to weaken the political parties.

TNS: How was it "specifically designed", as you say?

AC: There are some obvious things, such as the non-party-basis. Secondly, I believe, by creating the executive-based system in which there is one powerful nazim, the individual in some sense becomes too big for any party. If you are the nazim of Lahore, you don't need to be accountable to any party. Furthermore, there is no party based relationship between the council and the executive.

TNS: Does it mean that ideally the system should be party-based?

AC: I think we have to move beyond that. What does 'party-based' mean? Faisal Saleh Hayat was a stalwart of the PPP till Musharraf came in and ensured that he was now a stalwart of the PML-Q. So, parties are very prone to raids. These are party structures which have a weak cadre base; they have a weak second-tier leadership, because they have been raided periodically. And they are parties with a strong provincial and national leadership where it's really the cult of the leader in some sense that holds these parties together. It is a great issue for these parties that you start providing individual resources; it will become easier for a dictator in this situation to buy nazims that are bigger than parties and make claims of having a big constituency for himself.

In some sense, the current crisis is a result of the fact that no attempt was made by NRB or Musharraf to actually sell this local government system to the parties. And I think 2005 was the last straw that broke the camel's back, because that was a blatantly rigged election. That means the local governments are politicised. They are politicised even today.

TNS: There is an international consensus also. The international financial institutions also talk of devolution. Do you find a connection?

AC: I think there is a constituency, also of NGOs, and international organisations would also support it. The point is, the people who have come inside the parliament seem to have a consensus opinion against retaining this system. This contradicts the Charter of Democracy which very clearly talks about creating a local government system. In my view, a devolved democratic local government system should be maintained. The reformed system should strengthen party democracy at the local level and democratic service delivery should be a central pillar of that system. Some elements of the current system should be retained such as the link between union councils and the upper tier goverments. A positive element of the current system was the spatial dispersion of funds whereby areas that had never seen funds got the funds.

Secondly, for the first time, the people at union level developed an association with the government. Earlier the union council used to be a sort of a defunct body -- it became empowered by virtue of two things: a)the nazim of union council became the councilor, b)union councils were the electoral college of the nazim. So, this gave the union councils some bite.

But there are issues, for instance, about devolution of revenue administration. Again, we don't have any good evidence, but there seems to be a lot of accusations that one hears from various stakeholders, not just DMG officers. The problem got worse, became politicised and more factionalised.

Similarly, there are issues regarding regulation.

TNS: What are your views on women's representation?

AC: Increased women's representation was also a positive step although reserved seats were there in 1979 also. The problem is that reserved seats representative at the union council levels, where there was the greatest entry of the non-elite, lacked substantive authority and power.

TNS: What is this tension between the provinces and the local government? Given our framework, what is left for the provinces to do?

AC: It's a very good question. I think the ordinance was built upon the idealism that the provincial legislature and national legislature should legislate and give you service delivery at the local level. But then the last government violated the principle by running numerous vertical programmes. But this raises an important issue that we are a democratic polity in transition. It seems there is going to be the involvement of higher tier politicians in development. I don't see it disappear; it's still thriving in America, it's there in India. So, the politics of delivery is going to be central to the behaviour of the provincial politician and this has to be made compatible with what you design at the local government level.

TNS: How can democratic elements of local governments be strengthened?

AC: Local governments, to start with, should be party-based. More importantly, there should be parliamentary-based systems at the level of each tier. Also, given the growing urbanization, it is important to have empowered and representative urban local governments. There would be a number of benefits from an empowered democratic local government system. Competition between governments would result in pressure to perform. Political parties will benefit from members getting exposure of running government at lower tiers. Parties will build democratic roots all the way down to the union council level. The CPM in West Bengal used local government to strengthen democratic roots all the way down to the village level. Ironically, the whole local government debate has got stuck on the issue of executive magistracy. Nobody is talking about representation, service delivery, accountability and party strengthening. For me it is very important that the parties are able to build bases and entrench their cadres in governments. They also get to benefit because they will have more seasoned administrators, not just politicians or vote gatherers, but people who can actually run programmes and projects at the district level, at the tehsil level, and then graduate from there to becoming provincial politicians.

TNS: How will you assess the strengths and weaknesses of the present system and its performance?

AC: We have very little good evidence on different aspects of performance that is in the public domain.

The work that has been done in this regard is very piecemeal. I don't think any of this work is sufficient enough to make big generalisations about the system. For instance, on the revenue issue, whether things improved or worsened we don't have any evidence.

Secondly, as regards regulation, we don't have any studies. In some areas, you find a great deal of regulatory failures, but then they were there in the previous system also.

On the other hand, there are some positives. Like I said, under-provided villages got access to development funds. There is rule-based access to funds for under-developed districts. Likewise, it also transpires that women's representation at local level has happened.

The reason I don't go on performance assessment is that nobody can give a conclusive performance assessment. I mean, you can pick any one bit of evidence and start to shake things up and make a claim one way or make a claim the other way.

In our studies, we found a lot of elite capture in certain areas but, on the other hand, we found that access to funds for under-provided areas had increased dramatically.

My own view is that the principal question should be how do we deepen democracy at the level of local governments all the way down to the union level.

TNS: Are you suggesting that this was a better system?

AC: Overall my position is that reforms that strengthen democracy at the local level have to be introduced. However, some important aspects should be retained. In the 1979 Ordinance the union council was a disempowered tier; it was a kind of a redundant entity. I have a preference where the union council actually is integrated into an effective form of government. I think that having a smaller political unit linked to an effective government is extremely important. Party-based politicians at the lowest levels should have some voice in the system. It has to be realised that society has become very complex. There has to be some political linkages between citizen-based groups and societal groups and government. That '79 never really addressed adequately. The involvement of civil society in the revival of democracy is acknowledged. We need to integrate civil society into parties and government; without this a vibrant political society will not be constructed. A vibrant political society that integrates citizens at all tiers into organs of government is the best way to create real stakes for democracy and against dictatorship.

As the local government completes its second tenure in October this year, several controversies have already surfaced that question the merits and demerits of the system. Ideally, the local government should be followed by elections and, eventually, the coming into power of the next set of elected representatives. However, the current situation is such that the entire system seems to be at stake, as those for it and those against the system are pitched against each other.

PML-Q and MQM, the two biggest beneficiaries of the Musharraf policies including those regarding the local government system, are going all out to save the system which, they believe, has served the masses well at the local level whereas it works for them.

On the other hand, PML-N and PPP believe that the system was introduced to marginalise mainstream politics. They want massive changes or else a wrap-up of the system.

Within these controversies, hardly any one is looking seriously into details of the benefits this system has or even the losses it entails.

Those who were a part of the system have mixed views on the merits and demerits of the devolution system and they find it hard to tell whether it was beneficial.

In view of Munazza Hashmi, a high court lawyer and member of district council in Multan, the system has brought in representation at the grass roots level which is "a very positive thing". However, she adds, little or no power rests with those who came up through the grass roots.

"There were elected representatives but they had no power," says Munazza. "The local government ordinance was not clear; power rested only with the nazim, reducing the other members of the union council to just nominal heads."

The LG system as outlined in the local government ordinance of 2001 provides 33 percent representation to women, 5 percent to peasants and labour and one seat to minorities in each union council (UC). Experts on the devolution plan think that the local government system provided a large space to middle and lower class citizens who otherwise remained outside (local) power corridors. "The space created by the representation of women, labour and minority representatives is important," says Salman Abid, Regional Manager, Strengthening Participatory Organisation (SPO), and an expert on local government system. "You can see a lot of movement by these groups; even the recent resistance against scrapping of the local government system is proof that people got space because of the system."

Obviously, the system is not free of flaws and needs due attention and attempts to address them. For instance, there is a general perception that the system was not implemented in the way it was perceived or propagated and there was no devolution of power at all.

However, the debate generated in recent months on whether the system should continue or not makes one thing clear that there is a popular demand for devolution of power. Political statements, speeches in seminars organised by civil society organisations as well as discussions with the PPP leadership suggest that there is a need to devolve power. There can be differences on whether it should continue to be as the Musharraf model or remodeled. Salman says the demand is also the result of the two tenures the system has seen.

The local government system has also devolved 12 departments from provincial level to district levels and brought them under district level control. Confusion around legal issues related to this plan and also a tussle between provincial departments and district governments made this devolution difficult and on many occasions the nazims and provincial ministers went against each other publicly.

The local government ordinance is blamed for most of the problems attributed to the system as it does not clarify power sharing and also the devolution of departments.

"Entire power rests with nazims without any checks and balances," says Munazza. "You get elected, but have no powers. This creates problems for you at the local level."

She does not agree that increase in the women's representation made any big difference.

Along with 25 other members she says she submitted a proposal for lady health park to be built in Multan, but it was never approved. "We were 43 female members and supported the proposal, but 150 male members vetoed it."

Despite these setbacks, she says all the women members have played their role in bringing local governance on track in the district. "We pointed out and talked about it frankly in the council wherever we saw problems," she adds.

There are other people who believe the system has many good, in-built spaces for village-level development programmes, but such CCBs were manipulated by nazims and district coordination officers. Full authority to nazims with no control of provincial and line departments had also leveled a lot of corruption allegations as allotment of contacts and use of funds remain a nazim's prerogative. The councils were supposed to be taken into confidence but they weren't.

Senator Justice (r) Abdul Razzaq A Thaim, the sitting federal minister for Local Government and Rural Development (LG&RD), belongs to Pakistan Muslim League Functional (PML-F). He has also been serving as the minister for Local Government in General (r) Pervez Musharraf's regime (2002-07). TNS spoke to him about the legal and political prospects of the controversial LG system in the wake of demands of provinces to abolish it or introduce amendments and appoint administrators by suspending the nazims. The minister did not talk about the political aspects of the issue as he wanted to be impartial. However, he mentioned legal aspects of the issue. Following are the excerpts from the interview.By Waqar Gillani

The News on Sunday: There are reports that the federal government has decided to abolish the local government system. To what extent are these reports true?

Abdul Razzaq Thaim: Local government is a 150-year-old system in the subcontinent. It has faced changes from time to time. Field Martial Ayub Khan brought major changes in the system, rechristening it as BD (Basic Democracy) system in 1959 and turning it into an electorate college. The system was the same, though. The local government system cannot be abolished; it is protected under Section 140A of the 1973 Constitution. There is a misunderstanding among the common people and the political parties that the system is being given up. I repeat, no one can abolish this system as this is part of the constitution.

TNS: How do you see General (r) Pervez Musharraf's Local Government Ordinance?

ART: Musharraf promulgated the Ordinance with input from National Reconstruction Bureau (NRB). However, provinces have been running the system independently. There was no interference from the federal government. It is also important to mention that the local government election was being held by the election commission. There was no election authority in the province for the purpose. However, let me also say that many things under the system were not implemented in letter and spirit, such as the role of CCB (Citizens Community Board), maintenance of accounts etc.

TNS: What changes are being made in the law after the demands by the provincial governments?

ART: Article 268 sub article 2 of the Constitution binds the federal government to bring changes in the (local government) system on the approval or recommendation of provinces. This year so far we have held several meetings with the provinces with the purpose of considering changes in the system. We found that all provinces wanted changes in the system. They also deposited their drafts with the federal government whereupon the prime minister recommended the changes to the president. Even the Sindh government has submitted a draft of changes in the local government system.

On July 8, a meeting between provinces and federal government was held which was also attended by the stakeholders including the chief ministers or their representatives. All of them agreed to introduce changes in the system.

The president has the power to hold the present law till December 31, 2009. After that period the system will automatically be transferred to the provinces that can make their own laws for running the LG system. So far, the president has not signed the proposal.

TNS: Is it true that administrators are being appointed in districts instead of holding a fresh LG poll?

ART: Yes, there are proposals by the provinces to appoint administrators instead of nazims till the next elections are held. But the administrators have nothing to do with the new local government elections. The administrators will run only day-to-day affairs. Currently, the environment is not conducive for elections in the country. The situation of Karachi, Balochistan and NWFP is in front of all. Ultimately, the provinces will have to hold the local government elections. They cannot avoid it constitutionally.

TNS: If the system is not being abolished why is there so much fuss among different sections of society and among nazims? What can their motive be?

ART: Actually, there is no controversy at all. The nazims are giving it a certain colour; that's it. The sitting local governments complete their term in October, so their protest is unnecessary. They just want to take political mileage by giving rise to controversy.

TNS: If the local government is a provincial matter why do we have a federal-level portfolio? Why is this not completely left to the provinces?

ART: There are many other roles of the ministry; for instance, it deals with lawmaking and has to take care of monitoring and supervision. Besides, the ministry supervises what the provinces are doing under the local government system. It has the role of policymaking and implementation.