This is with reference to Mr. Shafqat Mahmood’s article “Mystery of local government” (The News, July 31) and the letters under the same title by Dr Mian Saeed Ahmad (Aug 17) and Ms. Amna Suleman (Aug 22). Unfortunately, the arguments that have been presented against devolution are either totally sidestepping or grossly misrepresenting the issue.
The cake was taken by Mr. Mahmood who claims that local govts are not being abolished and the only changes are in the management of districts. This is like arguing that our military take-overs did not throw out democracy but only made some changes in the management of the country! Surely, putting the bureaucracy in charge of the districts in place of elected Nazims and union councils cannot just be trivialized as a mere change in management. With the deputy commissioners running almost the entire show, the elected local bodies would be relegated to the same status as the parliament during periods of military rule.
Both Mr. Mahmood and Ms. Amna Suleman have also repeated the standard red herring that elected local bodies are created for the purpose of strengthening military rule. Ms. Suleman even goes a step further to add that “the British government created local councils in order to muster support for the colonialists against the local population.” Vow! So were the members of these councils established by the British some aliens from space and not locals? And what about the motives of the British in creating the executive magistracy? Isn’t it rather ironic that those who try to use the motive fallacy to discredit devolution fail to remember that the executive magistracy they prefer was introduced by the British for perpetuating their own colonial rule?
Coming to the performance of the executive magistracy and the Musharrafian system in maintaining law and order, FATA is simply not a good barometer because it currently faces an extra-ordinary situation. As for Islamabad and the rest of the country, law and order can be improved by reforming the police and holding it properly accountable. Mr. Shafqat Mahmood writes that the system of public safety commissions has failed in this regard and the police itself does not care about these bodies. Instead of doing away with devolution, why can this problem simply not be fixed by giving real powers to the public safety commissions (which did not happen because Musharraf’s political allies did not want to let them function) or by developing some other reasonable method of checks on the police?
Lastly, both Mr. Mahmood and Ms. Suleman have also avoided explaining how executive magistracy can be justified, when it goes against the independence of the judiciary.
Simply put, there is no mystery of local government. There is only deliberate confusion created by bureaucrats (both serving and retired) and those politicians who want to control the districts through the bureaucracy from the provincial capitals instead of leaving local issues mostly in the hands of elected local govts. (Aqil Sajjad)
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