A new nexus

PRESIDENT General Pervez Musharraf has embarked on what may prove a make-or-break visit to the US. En route he will touch the UK, and on his return, Germany and France. But the crucial part of his two-week, four-country tour remains his meeting with US President George Bush at the presidential retreat, Camp David, on June 24. General Musharraf leaves behind a deeply divided country with grave apprehensions widespread as to the shape of things to come.

Until a few weeks ago, the deadlock over the LFO threatened to destabilize the whole edifice of ‘democracy’, with the rumour mills grinding overtime that another dismissal of the assemblies was on the cards. To General Musharraf’s chagrin, the MMA, widely believed to have been helped by the military establishment and its intelligence arm to make unprecedented gains in the October elections last year, has refused to play ball on his desire to retain the COAS’s post as well as the presidency for an indefinite period. In the minuet the two sides have been dancing in the name of negotiations, now one, now the other side has laid claim to showing ‘flexibility’.

The last straw for Musharraf though may well have been when, on hinting at willingness to at least contemplate an open-ended timeframe for removing his army uniform, the president was presented by the MMA with a 17-point Islamization agenda.

In an interview, the president has again stated that the time for doffing his army uniform will be when he is satisfied that democratic institutions are in place and functional. He says Pakistan is a country where democracy has to be ‘tailored’ to take account of our politicians’ immaturity. This is an unremarkable piece of wisdom, echoing as it does every military ruler’s view in our chequered history.

What is left unsaid by General Musharraf is that whatever the sins of the politicians, it is the military establishment that bears the heavier burden of responsibility for sabotaging democratic development, time and again. Stripped of self-serving justifications, the project General Musharraf launched after the coup of 1999 was to ensure an overt control by the military over the political process.

In this project was implicit the recognition by the military that control from behind the curtain through the civilian interregnum of 1988-99 had ended disastrously, not the least because the politicians’ foibles were exacerbated by the continuing role of GHQ in manipulating and goading the national agenda along lines favoured by it. The latest ‘experiment’ in tailored democracy too, like its predecessors, appears to be heading for failure, this time even before it got off the ground.

The crisis over the LFO has now taken a new turn, with the speaker of the National Assembly having delivered a belated ruling that the controversial ordinance is part of the Constitution. The opposition is not surprisingly up in arms again, and has threatened a no-trust motion against the speaker for revealing his partisan position. Dangling over the heads of the MMA’s 65 MNAs is the sword of disqualification if the writ in the courts against their madrassah degrees being recognized as equivalent to graduation (a contribution of the Musharraf government to education) bears fruit.

There now seems little meeting of minds between the two sides of the divide, perhaps finally laying to rest the tantalizing hopes for salvaging the system that have appeared only to disappear forthwith, chimera-like, into the political haze. The two other main players, the PPP and the PML(N), seem to have no further direct role to play in the impasse, except as camp followers of the MMA. The latter’s engagement with the establishment seems to have been further complicated by the NWFP government’s Islamization drive in the province (with minor echoes in Punjab).

The drive began with defacing and tearing down advertising billboards featuring women. It has since escalated with the passing of the Shariat Bill by the NWFP assembly, and the presentation of the Hisbah Bill (setting up a religious police force to implement the ruling clerics’ vision of an Islamic society). When Musharraf reacted to the billboards issue by wanting the Chief Secretary and IG Police of the NWFP summarily changed with officers to the federal government’s liking for failing to uphold law and order, Prime Minister Zafarullah Jamali stuck his neck out by meeting NWFP Chief Minister Akram Durrani and offering him a face-saving compromise of proposing three panels of officers to choose from.

Despite Musharraf’s two subsequent vitriolic speeches in the NWFP against what he termed the Talibanization of the province, it seems that for its own reasons (perhaps the impending tour abroad of General Musharraf weighed heavily, and the general’s attack on Talibanization was considered sufficient to allay any apprehensions abroad), the establishment decided that this was not an appropriate time for any precipitate action. Any such move may have exacerbated the confrontation between the centre and the NWFP and led to a general destabilization of the parliament brought into existence by the October 2002 elections. There the matter rests for the moment, at least until the president is done with his yatra.

On his travels, Musharraf carries with him high hopes of obtaining trade concessions and aid from all four of these developed countries. In addition, it is inevitable that the situation in the region will be on the agenda. Foremost is likely to be the recent peace initiatives with India, followed closely by the post-war scenario in Iraq and the unfinished business of rebuilding Afghanistan. As far as the first of these is concerned, despite a slight thaw emerging and bringing in its wake exchange of visits of various types between Pakistan and India, the positions of the two sides appear unchanged, dampening hopes of any early solution, especially where Kashmir is concerned.

Perhaps there is an implicit recognition that no quick solution is likely that will change the present status quo on this long running dispute, and that the beginning of negotiations is the best that can be hoped for while other, easier issues are taken up (restoration of full diplomatic representation, easing the visa regime, possibly trade and other forms of exchange).

Afghanistan’s continuing woes have been made worse by the alleged ability of the residual Taliban, Al Qaeda and their new-found ally Gulbuddin Hekmatyar to mount attacks on the American and Karzai government forces and then withdraw to sanctuaries in the two provinces of the NWFP and Balochistan. In the former province, the MMA leads a coalition government. In the latter, it is part of the ruling coalition led by the PML(Q).

The power sharing formula of the Bonn process has clearly left the Pushtuns of Afghanistan dissatisfied. This has meant they have tended to gravitate, slowly but surely, towards supporting the Taliban surreptitiously once again. Paucity of promised aid for the Karzai government, financial and security-oriented, has made matters worse, confining the writ of the Kabul government largely to the capital.

Even there, the recent car bomb attack on an ISAF troop-carrying bus has indicated the Taliban/Al Qaeda network is now capable of striking in the heart of Kabul. Economic hardship because of the shortage of reconstruction aid, has further strengthened the armed militias under regional warlords.

The US-led ouster of the Taliban and Al Qaeda has spawned a new civil and national war in Afghanistan, whose fallout Pakistan cannot escape. Washington will require a firm assurance from General Musharraf that Pakistani security forces will root out the sanctuaries allegedly enjoyed by the Afghan resistance in the two bordering provinces of the NWFP and Balochistan to bring an end to the daily attacks on their troops across the border.

President Musharraf has revealed in another interview the purpose of his one-day visit to Saudi Arabia on the eve of his departure for the West. In the aftermath of the Iraq war, both Pakistan and India were asked to send troops to police some areas in Iraq (Pakistani troops in Basra and on the Iraq-Jordan border, Indian troops in Baghdad, at least a brigade each). Both countries have expressed reservations. India thinks it would further erode its relationship with the Arab world, already under strain because of the burgeoning Indo-Israeli defence and other cooperation. Pakistan too is wary of sending its troops because of Arab and Muslim sensitivities.

Each country is reluctant without at least the fig-leaf of a UN mandate to step into what is fast deteriorating into an American quagmire in Iraq. The inability of the Anglo-Americans to persuade these two South Asian countries with arguably the finest militaries in the region to deploy in Iraq, has led to an alternative being posed to Pakistan. The reason for the short visit to Saudi Arabia, as now partly revealed by General Musharraf, was to put together a plan for at least two divisions of Pakistani army personnel to be deployed in Saudi Arabia to man and maintain the military bases the Americans think it politic to now withdraw from. These bases date back to the first Gulf War.

In the light of the emergence of a current of opinion hostile to the continued American troops’ presence on Saudi soil, the US military seems inclined to deploy elsewhere in the Gulf (Centcom headquarters has already moved to Qatar before the second Gulf War). The fact of recent Al Qaeda attacks in Saudi Arabia seems to have woken up the Americans and Saudis to the security and political risks entailed in the continued presence of American troops in Saudi bases.

A new politico-military nexus would appear therefore to be emerging in the wake of the Iraq war between a rampant and aggressive US with imperial ambitions, conservative Arab regimes such as Saudi Arabia fearful of internal unrest, and the military establishment in Pakistan, bent upon gaining American goodwill by doing its bidding in the region. The latter’s role seems to have been determined as one of providing replacement troops where an American presence may act as a provocation in the region for anti-American sentiment and place American troops in harm’s way.

Some observers are inclined to see Musharraf’s visit to the West, and especially the US, at this juncture as an attempt to seek approval for an extended lease of life in power. The general could conceivably gain such a nod from Washington as a reward for his support to the US-led war on terror. Whether that would give him even a semblance of legitimacy at home though remains open to question. And therein lie the seeds of another political crisis down the road.

Vision of a bright future

THE rulers in Islamabad are holding visions of a brighter economic future for Pakistan following the macro-economic stability. And President Pervez Musharraf has been saying that the country is at the take-off stage economically with finance minister Shaukat Aziz reinforcing his argument.

The President now says Pakistan can double its exports every three or four years after it has achieved over 10 billion dollar exports this year which may touch 11 billion dollars by June 30. And the finance minister has now agreed to introduce crop insurance in the country responding to the demand of the farmlord members of Parliament. This demand had been accepted by successive governments since the day of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto but has never been implemented.

Even the experimental areas where it had to be introduced first were not earmarked. And the insurance companies, including the official outfits, had not been ready to undertake the venture however wholesome that is. It is a very costly venture with enormous teething troubles and open to varied abuses. It is a scheme which has to be introduced step by step, cautiously.

The President says it takes a 20 per cent increase in exports to double the exports in 4 years. But if he wants to double the exports in three years the annual rise in exports has to be 25 per cent on a sustained basis, which can be exceedingly exacting. He has ignored the fact that a 20 per cent increase in exports has also meant a 30 per cent increase in imports and a doubling of the trade deficit on that score.

The fact is that our exports in various ways too are import-dependent, although 66 per cent of our exports are textile based. The energy used for manufacturing the textiles is also imported since the oil comes from abroad. The chemicals used by the textile industry, too, comes from abroad, and so are the machinery parts.

We have also begun importing higher quality cotton in significant quantities. If we exported 218,315 bales of cotton this year we imported almost 700,000 bales of cotton. Import of cotton is likely to go up by 10 to 15 per cent this year, as production of cotton within the country has so far recorded 10.211 million bales against 10.613 million bales last year.

We have also to import far more textile machinery to replace the old equipment which can cost a great deal of money. And it can’t be the kind of second hand machinery we are trying to buy from Russia, China or other countries.

The President has also calculated without the kind of revolution to come in the textile industry the world over within 18 months when the textile quotas are to come to an end and there will be a free-for-all in the textile trade globally.

Pakistani textile manufacturers’ first task will be to safeguard their global quotas from being snatched by others, including China which is emerging as a giant textile trader in the world after having invested a great deal on textile manufacturing and exports. South Korea, Japan and other textile manufacturing countries will play an aggressive export role.

Meanwhile, Pakistan has to invest a great deal more in its industry and train its management and workers better. It can be a herculean task. The textile workers have not only to be trained better but also given better pay scales instead of being so poorly paid because of the varied abuses in the system which makes the workers get a raw deal. Our textile technology institutes have also to give a better performance and produce better engineers and technicians.

The government should consult leaders of the industry more and accept their more productive and progressive recommendations and make the necessary large investment needed. The government’s approach to the industry should change radically, anticipate the changes and challenges to come and come up with the right remedies. The Industry, too, should be far-sighted and make the necessary changes within the system instead of expecting too much from the government and delay in making the necessary changes. And the government should be ready to give the fiscal concessions essential in view of the revolutionary changes likely to affect the industry and let only the survival of the fittest and the truly competent.

On the other side the crop insurance to come can provide protection to all kinds of growers. In the area of cotton, availability of cheap cotton in plenty was one of the main reasons for the textile industry to flourish. At one stage cotton output rose from 3 million bales of cotton to 13 million bales and surprised the world, India in particular. But in recent times the cotton output has been around 10 million bales, necessitating imports as during this year. Over the years efforts have been made to develop dirt-free cotton and an infection resistant crop but with partial success.

The drive to increase the output per acre and disease resistant cotton and dirt-free cotton must be strengthened and the best possible results obtained. If we do not have the comparative advantage of cheap and plenty of cotton our textile industry may not thrive and will not be able to compete with other textile producers very well. In this area crop insurance can be very helpful. But that has to begin with choice of some areas for initial trial before that is practised on a large scale.

Shaukat Aziz has come up with far more concessions to a large number of people. But he has limited the withholding tax exemption for national savings scheme account holders for amounts up to Rs.1,50,000. He would have been wiser to raise the amount to Rs. 200,000 which is not a large amount for the widows or the elderly. Winding up the budget debate he announced a number of concessions. But the overall loss of revenue from withdrawal of import duty announced by him or reducing them on things like dump-trucks or bulldozers or sales tax on infant milk or heart operation equipment is small. In that, he has followed the strategy of many finance ministers who announce many reliefs but lost very little of taxes.

In fact the IMF says he has budgeted for Rs.7 billion more than what had been agreed with the government, and since there are no new taxes he may not get the addition of Rs. 7 billion. The IMF says they had agreed to raise only Rs. 503 billion as taxes and not the new target of Rs. 510 billion.

The IMF is being even more gallant in saying it can offer next year a new programme of two billion dollars for three years beginning 2004 to help Pakistan along the current lines of the Poverty Reduction and Growth Facility which provides 1.3 billion dollars until November next year.

While Shaukat Aziz wants no new IMF programme as that is too humiliating, the IMF prefers that Pakistan continues to be under its regime with a larger amount than the current programme. It can be helpful in negotiating other aid programmes or seeking loans, it says. But Shaukat Aziz is adamant he needs no more IMF tutelage. Certainly if the U.S. would give the kind of large aid with or without more debt relief which President Musharraf would seek during this forthcoming U.S. visit it can be very welcome.

The volume of additional U.S. aid is becoming more and more of an issue as the President continues to speak about it and voices his disappointment with the U.S. administration in this regard despite his excellent rapport with President Bush. Certainly more U.S. grants will be far better than more IMF aid with its rigid conditionalities and perpetual oversight.

The finance minister says that for the first time in our history the amount allocated for development is equal to that allocated for defence — Rs.160 billion. But there is a basic difference in the treatment of both. While the defence expenditure may rise far ahead of the budgeted figure, as happened this year too when it rose from the budgeted Rs. 146 billion to Rs. 160 billion the actual development outlay was 40 per cent of the total allocation of Rs. 134 billion. And that happens too often, for one reason or another and is loudly lamented by the aid agencies who want to increase our capacity to spend more effectively and in time.

A11 that has forced the opposition to demand a proper debate on the defence expenditure with the full facts and figures made available to the parliament, by the government instead of the gross expenditure on defence administration and the armed forces only.

It is easy for the opposition to call for a full debate on the defence budget and difficult to be fully prepared for it. But the task has become less arduous with more and more military officers taking to politics and joining political parties.

Cypriots re-uniting

“The Cyprus problem has to be seen as part of the struggle between pro-European forces and those who resist democracy in Turkey,” explained Izzet Izcan, one of the organisers of the mass demonstrations on the Turkish side of Nicosia last December that began the avalanche of change now sweeping the island.

After 38 years of armed confrontation, Turkish-speaking Cypriots and their Greek-speaking fellow-citizens are finally speaking to one another again. They are even visiting across the Green Line that has divided the island since 1974, when the colonels who ruled Greece backed a coup in Nicosia aimed at uniting the whole island with Greece.

Turkey replied with an invasion that linked up most of the besieged Turkish-Cypriot communities in the north and turned 200,000 Greek-Cypriots into refugees (together with about 90,000 Turkish-Cypriots who fled their homes in the now solidly Greek south). But since the Green Line crossings were opened on 22 April, at least 15 per cent of the entire Cypriot population has crossed, often to visit the homes they lost in 1974.

Frequently the Greek refugees who fled south in 1974 find Turks who fled north at the same time in their former homes, but there is much more regret than anger. The younger generation of Greek- and Turkish-Cypriots are more curious than hostile, and can be found drinking together in the bars and communicating in halting English. The whole island is living through a kind of epiphany, and people even dare to hope that the long nightmare may be over.

Whether this is really the beginning of the end of the ‘Cyprus problem’ depends mostly on the outcome of the struggle between Turkish-Cypriot President Rauf Denktash and the Turkish general staff on one side, and Turkey’s new Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan on the other. Erdogan has already successfully defied the Turkish army on the issue of letting the United States use Turkish territory for the invasion of Iraq, and he is equally iconoclastic about Cyprus.

“If 30,000 people demonstrate at the same time in northern Cyprus, it means something is going on in northern Cyprus....We have to think hard about this business,” Erdogan said at the time of the December demos. “I am not in favour of following the Cyprus policy that has been followed for the past 30 or 40 years,” he announced a couple of weeks later. “This is not Mr Denktash’s personal business.” And with that, he began to apply the screws to the 78-year old Denktash, a stubborn autocrat who has ruled over the Turkish-Cypriots for more than half his life.

Stop the presses

THE three biggest stories last week (and possibly all year) were Martha’s Stewart’s indictment, Hillary Clinton’s book and Sammy Sosa’s corked bat.

I know this because the telephone has been ringing off the hook.

“When are you going to write about Martha Stewart?” Mary Jo Lipton asked.

“What is there to write about?”

“She lied, obstructed justice and was involved in insider stock trading.”

I said, “She is alleged to have done these things. She is innocent until she is found guilty and she has to have her day in court like any homemaker.”

“Hoo, hoo, hoo,” Mary Jo said.

“Why are people so excited about her criminal indictment?” I asked Mary Jo.

“Because if she lied about her stock transactions, how do we know that she hasn’t lied about her chocolate chip cookies?”

“I know for a fact that Martha never lied about baking, or her salads or her gardening. If she lied — and I’m not saying she did — the only time she allegedly perjured herself was when she was making money.”

Mary Jo said, “She cooked up the insider stock deal to make $200,000 when she already had a billion dollars.”

I replied, “If anyone deserved her money, Martha did. She allegedly did what any smart insider would do. People on Wall Street tip off their friends with information the public doesn’t have. That is what friendship is all about.”

“The government said she chopped up her records as if they were a salad,” Mary Jo asserted.

“Whom do you trust more — Martha or the government?”

Mary Jo replied, “Attorney General Ashcroft said we should always trust the government.”

I said, “I got to go. Why did you call?”

“I’m about ready to make chocolate chip cookies and I don’t know whether to do it now or wait for the trial.”

I hung up and Sarah Newman called about Hillary Clinton’s book.

She said, “Do you believe her version of when she found out about Monica?” “I have no reason not to believe her. What’s the question?”

“She said the president lied to her and she only found out about it two days before he was to testify under oath concerning the affair. She wrote that she was furious and dumbfounded.”

“That sounds right.”

“How do you know? Were you there?” Sarah asked.

I replied, “I was on Martha’s Vineyard at the time and I could see they weren’t talking to each other.”

“I don’t care what happened. I’m still going to buy the book. I’m a history buff.”

The third story that has rocked the world has to do with Chicago Cubs baseball star Sammy Sosa. It was discovered he used a corked bat — a no-no in the game. The bat split in half when Sosa hit the ball. He said he thought he had picked up a regular bat, but it was a corked one used for practice.

Sosa pleaded guilty, apologized to his fans and said he would never use a corked bat again.

The reason it was one of the big stories of the week is that baseball is a sacred sport, and a scandal involved with it must be examined, re-examined and re-examined again. And then shown on TV for the millionth time. It also affects the cereal boxes that Sosa’s picture is on.

So thanks Martha, Hillary and Sammy for making my day. —Dawn/Tribune Media Services

Will local government system survive?

THE recent ‘semi-resignation’ of 24 District Nazims in the Frontier has revived debate about the local government system introduced by President Musharraf. As the resignations indicate, the system is going through a difficult phase. Who or what is to blame — the system, the manner of its introduction, its implementation, or all three? Even more important, is this difficulty just a phase, or does it signal the beginning of the end of this latest attempt to take power to the grassroots?

It is hard to fault the logic behind the local government system. The simplest definition of ‘devolution of power’ is the transfer of decision-making authority and funds to the grassroots. This means that those closest to the ground — in the best position to know what is and what is not needed in a particular village or ward — plan its development. It also means that the gap between policy-makers and the public is reduced, making it easier for the latter to hold the former accountable for their actions. Only those opposed to efficient planning, good service delivery and public accountability can find fault with the principle of devolution.

But is the Local Government Ordinance 2001 the best legal framework for devolution? The ordinance makes important innovations: elected officials have replaced bureaucrats at the head of local governments, local councils monitor the performance of local government departments, inclusion of women is mandatory, the three tiers of local government are integrated through common membership.

So far so good. But what of the non-party basis on which local governments were elected and of the indirect election of the District Nazim and Naib Nazim? As heads of the local government, they more than anyone else should have been elected directly by the people. Democracy demands this, and more particularly, their role requires this. Public vote would have conferred much more clout (and hence authority) than the votes of a few hundred councillors.

Democracy also demands party-based elections. Party allegiances can only be papered over not removed from the electoral equation. Far better to acknowledge this reality than go through the charade of partyless politics.

These (and others) are relatively minor flaws. They create a democratic deficiency within the devolution plan, but do not detract from its overall potential for good. So why the problems? Try option two: the manner in which the local government system was introduced - or rather imposed - and the motives behind its imposition.

There is an irony in a system that seeks to promote grassroots democracy being devised and brought in by a military government. Participation, grassroots decision-making, consultation — key principles of devolution — were neglected during the formulation of the devolution plan now in place. Politicians, bureaucrats and the public — key stockholders in the system — were only marginally involved in devising it.

The same irony applies to the motives behind devolution. An ordinance to promote democracy was promulgated with the aim of emasculating democracy. For the military government supported devolution not because it takes power to the grassroots, but because it takes power away from the national and provincial governments and assemblies — its main political opponents. One could argue that if the system is good, what does it matter who introduced it or why? The ends justify the means.

That might be applicable in some other cases — like people deprived of their independence fighting back with whatever means they have but not in the case of devolution. Here the means determine the ends. Grassroots democracy can only be achieved by genuine democratic means.

Its genesis erodes the basic premise of devolution of power and thus the credibility of the entire local government system. Ulterior motives paint the same black mark.

Devolution is seen primarily as a tool of military power, rather than a harbinger of grassroots power. Its benefits have been eclipsed by the military’s anti-politician agenda.

These ‘black birthmarks’ of devolution are unmissable, but they could be erased by honest implementation. Sadly, that too has been weak. Any new system — and particularly one making such across-the-board changes — faces teething problems.

In the case of devolution, these natural difficulties have been exacerbated by the negative actions of a host of different actors, starting with the National Reconstruction Bureau, but encompassing bureaucrats, local government councillors, politicians and (that omnipresent institution) the military.

The NRB conceived devolution behind closed doors. Even when finalized, its progenitors failed to communicate its basic features to the people for debate and discussion and through this, to make it acceptable to them. This failure was made worse by hasty implementation.

Old administrative structures were dismantled and new ones erected overnight. Predictably, neither dismantling nor construction was done properly. Many old sources of authority persist, many new ones are ignored, while in many places there is no clear line of authority.

The second culprit in poor implementation is the bureaucracy. Its reasons for resisting devolution are obvious. Like the army, it has a contempt for politicians. Ceding authority (and its associated privileges) to them was a painful step. Bureaucratic resistance was made easier by the gaping capacity gaps among those tasked with assuming power from them: local government councillors. Many of them still do not understand what their precise roles and responsibilities are, far less the intricacies of budgeting, monitoring and development planning.

This capacity deficit is a huge obstacle in the way of successful implementation of decentralization reform.

Then came October’s long-awaited elections to the National and Provincial Assemblies and the return of the politicians. It did not take long for the issue of legitimacy of the decentralisation reforms to be raised (the on-going debate over the LFO).

Nor did it take long for provincial governments to attempt to curb the local govern-ments below them. With bureaucrats generally aiding the politicians, it has been an unequal contest.

The one party in a position to protect the new system from the joint politico-bureaucratic assault, the military, is doing just that. Note President Musharraf’s firm statements rejecting the resignation of NWFP’s District Nazims. But the army’s over-riding priority to restrain politicians is also undermining the local government system, albeit unintentionally.

The rot started with last year’s stage-managed presidential referendum. Having insisted on partyless apolitical local governments, General Musharraf then made a U-turn and demanded their politicization. Everyone is familiar with the manner in which District Nazims were recruited onto the presidential campaign team. The same process continued in October’s elections. Local governments that cooperated with the ‘promote PML-Q’ agenda have been rewarded with largesse from the centre; those that did not, have been correspondingly punished.

All this — first the politicization, then the discrimination — eroded the supposed neutrality and development-oriented purpose of the local government system. It has enforced the impression that local governments were created by the military solely to serve its own purpose.

So what of the future? Will the local government system get through this difficult phase or will it collapse? The simple answer is: yes, it will survive because it has no other choice. Imagine the chaos if the whole system were to be thrown out. No, the point of no return long past. It is too late to turn the clock back and reintroduce DC control.

But survival takes different forms. There is healthy productive survival, in which the end-goals of decentralized government — better service delivery and accountability — are realized.

There is also sickly survival, in which the system does not die but does not achieve anything either. And there are the many degrees of survival in between these extremes.

The kind of survival done by the local government system will depend on whether the flaws in its implementation can be remedied. Much can be done to ensure that it succeeds and delivers the benefits of devolution.

Such a delivery would be sufficient to remove the stigma of its birth, and consolidate it so that it can outlive its creator (a true first in Pakistan’s long history of governmental and systemic inventions).

A preliminary list of ‘to do’s’ includes: promoting understanding and support for the local government system among stakeholders and the public; following decentralization of power with decentralisation of resources; curbing the rollback ambitions of the provincial governments; giving local councillors training and support to perform their roles; and — most important of all — keeping local governments firmly out of the military’s tussle with the politicians and treating them equally.

So far decentralization in Pakistan has not had an easy life, but it can get better.