Crucial local govt polls in KP today

Published May 30, 2015
The exercise is seen as mid-term polls for the ruling PTI, its allies and opposition parties—INP/File
The exercise is seen as mid-term polls for the ruling PTI, its allies and opposition parties—INP/File

A LITTLE over four years after the Awami National Party-led coalition government dissolved the local bodies in the erstwhile North-West Frontier Province, 13 million voters from across Khyber Pakhtunkhwa will on Saturday be queuing up to elect 41,000 members in what in proportionate terms can rightly be described as Pakistan’s biggest local government election exercise.

An unprecedented 84,000 candidates are in the run for village, neighbourhood, district and tehsil councils. An unprecedented 7,681 women are in the run for 6,678 seats, though many of them have returned unopposed.

The sheer size of the local governance system and the number of candidates make it the biggest electoral exercise of its kind in the country’s history. Public enthusiasm generated by it is understandable.

There are more candidates than the symbols the Election Commission of Pakistan could think of to allot them. In every street and mohalla, there are candidates eager to win and doling out goodies to get due attention and commitment from voters.


The exercise is seen as mid-term polls for the ruling PTI, its allies and opposition parties


If all candidates were to spend according to the expenditure limit set by the ECP, the sum thus spent on the election campaign would come to a whooping Rs6 billion. Such is the magnitude of the entire process. But this is the good part.

The bad part is that these elections, unlike in the past, are being held under the executive, through the administrative arm of the government, chiefly the deputy commissioners who have been declared district returning officers.

The judiciary and its returning officers, who had earned the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf’s opprobrium for their conduct during the last general elections, have declined to supervise the elections. This will, certainly, cause questions raised by the opposition parties which would cry foul if they lose the crucial polls.

Then there is this reluctance by the KP government to introduce rules of business to outline the structure and working of local government administration, roles and responsibilities of officers, officials, elected representatives and the local government institutions, a year and a half after it enacted the Local Government Act in October 2013.

The district and tehsil nazims and heads of village and neighbourhood councils and thousands of councillors and members, who, under the law, are required to take oath within 15 days of their notification by the Election Commission of Pakistan will thus be clueless as to what their roles and responsibilities would be, unless the rules of business are notified.

What is more, the government has also not been able to rent buildings and recruit 2,300 computer literate secretaries for village and neighbourhood councils, whose basic job, amongst other things, is to prepare budgets and help run the bodies.

The irony is that the government had allocated Rs2.38 billion as establishment costs in the last budget and the same amount was reflected in the now about-to-close financial year 2014-15.

Logically speaking, the secretarial staff should have been hired and trained in the new system to prepare them for their new roles and buildings rented so that the elected representatives could start working from the word go. Instead, the government looked the other way and nothing was done.

How would the new local bodies institutions utilise 30 per cent of the development budget that is going to go their way under the law in the absence of the rules of business and mechanism for cash transfer, allocation, budgeting and accounting, leave a lot of questions unanswered.

It will thus be interesting to see how much funds the KP government is going to allocate in its budget for 2015-16 due next week.

Under the Local Government Act, 2013, the total amount to be transferred to the local bodies institutions would be no less than 30 per cent of the provincial Annual Development Programme.

Also it would be interesting to see the government’s allocation for sectors and subjects which, under the Local Government Act, 2013, stand devolved to districts.

But perhaps more is at stake for the ruling PTI-led coalition government and the opposition parties in KP in the local bodies elections and its results than anything else. And this explains the foot-dragging on rules of business.

Almost half way through its rule, these local bodies elections are considered no less than mid-term elections for the PTI and its allies and rival opposition parties.

True, local bodies elections have their own dynamics. But these are the first party-based local bodies elections in the country. These elections will show whether the PTI has retained its popularity, increased it or its graph has plummeted. Likewise for the opposition it would demonstrate whether they have regained ground lost in the last general elections or their popularity has undergone further erosion.

And this explains why there are alliances and seat adjustments everywhere. Predictions may go wrong. KP has always sprung surprises when it comes to election results and the local government elections may not be any different.

But initial assessments indicate that the PTI is leading in eight of the 24 districts, followed by the Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam-Fazl and the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz in four districts each with the ANP trailing behind in three districts and the Jamaat-i-Islami in two districts. Pervez Musharraf’s All Pakistan Muslim League is in with a chance in Chitral district. The situation is less clear in three districts.

Eventually, however, all these political parties would have to cut deals and rope in independent councillors, and a large number of them is expected to win, to clinch district nazims’ positions.

Published in Dawn, May 30th, 2015

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