At first, after the Sindh Local Government Ordinance 2005 had lapsed, it seemed as if there were only two stakeholders in the process of local governance: the ruling duo of the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) and the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM).

But the new law is in fact a delicate balancing act between the wishes and interests of various stakeholders and political trends. It can only be perfected if the system is allowed to run, assessed and then its weaknesses redressed through the provincial legislature.

Any dispassionate analysis of the system of local governance instituted by General Pervez Musharraf would reveal the many inherent flaws and inefficiencies that needed to be rectified for the system to work. The Sindh Local Government Act of 2013 seeks to address exactly that: its stated objective is “to rationalise and reorganise the local government system in the province of Sindh.”

Not that reaching consensus on this Act was easy.

The most recent incarnation of the Sindh Local Government Act has been the most unanimous, but thorny issues of delimitation and power-sharing remain as impediments

The previous incarnation of the Sindh Local Government Act was drafted a few months before the national polls in 2013: on October 1, 2012, the ruling coalition produced the Sindh People’s Local Government Act-2012 (SPLGA-2012) before the provincial assembly. Salient features of the SPLGA-2012 included the constitution of district metropolitan corporations in Karachi, Hyderabad, Larkana, Sukkur and Mirpurkhas. Karachi returned to five administrative districts, while the commissionerate system was restored in some areas.

Other political players in the province immediately accused the ruling duo of foul play, alleging that each of them had extracted the maximum political benefit out of the proposed local administrations and the delimitation process that was to follow. Many pointed to the parallel administrative systems as reasons to doubt the sincerity of the law. With elections near, even marginal groups such as Qaumi Awami Tehreek and Sindh Taraqqi Pasand Party mobilised street strength to protest the SPLGA-2012 condemning it as a “conspiracy to divide Sindh.”

The courts were moved against the legislation too; the Supreme Court slapped a stay order on the SPLGA and ordered the provincial authorities not to hand over any of the 42 departments that it was planning on devolving to the local level. Various bar associations also jumped on the anti-SPLGA bandwagon, with the Sindh Bar Association also announcing protest rallies of their own.

In August that year, the Sindh government rolled out the Sindh Local Government Act-2013, but was forced to amend it thrice to satisfy various stakeholders.

The showpiece event of this resistance came on December 14, 2012, when during a mammoth public gathering in Hyderabad, opposition parties under the banner of Sindh Bachayo Committee showed public strength in challenging what the PPP and the MQM had drafted as the future of local governance.

The agitation managed to garner enough bad press for the ruling duo for them to shelve the plan till national polls had been conducted. The SPLGA, despite PPP leaders previously protesting that it was the first democratically-formulated system, was repealed on February 21, 2013. The provincial government reverted to the Sindh Local Government Ordinance of 1979 as the operational law. In the fall out, the PPP and MQM also parted ways.

The ruling duo had in fact been locked in deliberations over the form of the new system around the time that the SLGO-2005 was lapsing. A provincial coordination committee was constituted between the two parties, an arrangement that was subsequently extended at the district level too.

While the focus of these discussions centred around Karachi and Hyderabad, the larger question was whether to revert to the local government system of 1979, to keep Musharraf’s system and amend it, or to create a new hybrid. Crucial too was the question of who would control official land and the police — the province or the district.

The PPP argued that both needed to remain the domain of the provincial government, while the MQM argued that control of law and order in the city needed to be handed to the elected administrator of the city. With certain gerrymandering already having taken place in Karachi and elsewhere under Gen Musharraf, and new districts carved out of old ones, the PPP argued that the redrawing of boundaries needed to be just and rational.

Then there was the question of revenue and taxation: In the Musharraf incarnation, the city administration was allowed authority over both — thereby handing the local government an avenue of sustaining itself and meetings its costs. In an amended draft that all parties except the PPP later rejected, the financial powers of the local government were clipped, with district supremos no longer enjoying the authority to either collect revenue or taxes.

The fact that single line transfers needed to be done away had an impact too; district governments were now dependant on the province for the approval and use of finances. Before, local governments owed their existence to a dictator; now, their sustenance depended on the provincial government.

The process of re-formulating a local government law restarted after the new Sindh Assembly took oath in 2013. In August that year, the Sindh government rolled out the Sindh Local Government Act-2013, but was forced to amend it thrice to satisfy various stakeholders.

The first amendment act was passed by the Sindh Assembly on October 31, 2013 and had the governor’s assent on November 1. One of the major changes made in this draft was that candidates could only contest as a panel and not as independent candidates.

Another was an amendment to Section 75, allowing the district governments to engage in business: “The Council may, with the prior permission of the government, promote, administer, execute or implement schemes for undertaking any commercial, business enterprise or enter into public private partnership.”

But these amendments were not acceptable to all, not even the junior coalition partner, the MQM. The Sindh High Court (SHC) was subsequently moved by various parties, including the MQM, Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), and the Pakistan Muslim League- Functional (PML-F), to strike down the new amendments made by the PPP to the new local government act. The delimitation of constituencies in Karachi, Benazirabad, Naushero Feroz and other districts was also challenged. In all, over 10 applications had been filed to challenge the new law.

On December 30, 2013, a divisional bench of the SHC, headed by Justice Sajjad Ali Shah, granted the plea and declared all amendments to the proposed local government act as unconstitutional. The court ordered that the new changes be withdrawn immediately. The SHC also slammed the ruling PPP for continuing with the process of delimitation of constituencies and deemed these changes unconstitutional. It ordered the process be redone from scratch.

The second amendment act was passed in the Sindh Assembly on October 20, 2014. Among other changes, the phrase “union committee” was inserted in Section 10 — this brought some parity between union councils in the rural sector, and the new union committee in the urban sector.

Section 11 of the original law concerning delimitation of wards was done away with. In its original form, it read: “The government shall, in the prescribed manner, delimit wards in municipal committees, town committees and corporations.”

The third amendment act was passed by the Sindh Assembly on February 24, 2015. The governor provided his assent on February 28.

Section 10 came under the spotlight again. The amended text reads: “The government shall, by notification in the official gazette, determine the number of union councils, union committees and wards in municipal committees and town committees in accordance with the First Schedule... After demarcation of the councils under section 8 and determination of the number of union councils, union committees and wards under sub-section (1), the election commission shall delimit the union councils, union committees and wards.”

The argument of handing control over delimitation to the ECP was based on the premise that since the PPP would be contesting elections itself, it should not concern itself with election matters, else the neutrality of the process might be compromised.

But the Sindh government brushed aside these suggestions, arguing that responsibility was only being handed to the ECP on a temporary basis. In a sense, by rejecting these proposals, the PPP government retained its primacy over the process, and it could do so because it commanded the majority in the Sindh Assembly.

It is foolish to expect that the new local government system will be instituted without any hiccups. In terms of the division of responsibility and power, the implementation of this system is very much a case of experimenting till the balance of power is not skewed to any one side. This is a process that will take time and patience to keep iterating.

With the Sindh government assuming most responsibility for delimitation, it will also have to shoulder the blame for anything that goes wrong during the electoral process. But with the PPP under the cosh these days, any mistake could be fatal. How it negotiates this process might define the political course of Sindh. n

The writer tweets @ASYusuf

Published in Dawn, Sunday Magazine, June 28th, 2015

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