IT is a common feature of all Pakistani regimes — past and present, civil or military — that when institutions are weakened by legislative acts or executive orders they hesitate to exercise whatever little authority that remains.

And when empowered by law or circumstances, they tend to exceed, even abuse, their power.

The president and the prime minister, cabinet and parliament, civil services and the armed forces, even businesses, behave in this manner. In the current situation, however, this argument is more applicable to the judiciary and the district governments.

Foremost is the example of the Supreme Court. At one time it authorised a coup-making general to amend the constitution ‘for the attainment of the declared objectives.’ Now the court has taken upon itself to administer the retail price of sugar.

The court did not check Gen Pervez Musharraf when he exceeded the limits of his authority and can now do nothing when its instructions regarding the price of sugar are being ignored. Then it was the lack of will; now the will is there but the court can do little more than admonish the officials, millers and merchants while the consumers’ agony increases.

An unfortunate, but inevitable, consequence of the court’s intervention has been that now, not only does sugar cost more, it is hard to find.

This year’s Nobel Prize for economics has gone not to an economist but to a social scientist, Prof Elinor Ostrom, for her theory that the market is not perfect and when it goes wrong (as it often does), intervention by the state makes it only worse. It is better left to the ‘insiders.’ Nothing bears her theory out more than our sugar crisis.

Had ministers and judges not intervened it is very likely that sugar would have been selling at a price somewhere between what the court had decreed and what prevailed in the open market. The role of the government should have ended once it had laid down a policy; the courts had no role at all.

The Supreme Court, as all other courts, must devote its time and energy to enforcing human rights (eating sugar is not one) and to dispose of criminal cases which last for years and civil suits which span a generation. The struggle waged for the independence of the judiciary surely aimed at ends more lofty than controlling the price of sugar.

The pendulum of local government has also swung from one extreme to the other. In the past district councils were given limited functions and that too under bureaucratic supervision. Now in issues administrative and developmental district governments matter more than the provincial and central governments.

That in itself may not be undesirable but it is wholly untenable for the simple reason that the relationship between the nazim and provincial/federal government is determined more by personal influence and party affiliation than by law or common sense. Some nazims, thus, remain non-entities while others have made the provincial governments appear to be so.

Our inheritance at independence was that the head of the district board or municipality (mayor in Karachi and Lahore) was elected and his role was restricted to civic services and local development. Ayub Khan’s law put civil servants at the head of both, relegating the chairman/mayor to a secondary position. Under Musharraf’s law and personal control the council/municipality became the government and the nazim emerged as a rival, even adversary, of the provincial government.

The local government law of 2002 was drafted at the centre; the provinces were told to promulgate it without changing a comma and were constitutionally barred from amending it. Now that elections are due and the ban on amendments is also expiring, politics has come into full play.

The nazims are willing to part with nothing but the provincial governments would like to restrict them to civic functions. The party and personal interests are sure to prevail over the wider public interest in bargaining over this contested issue.

Particularly disagreeable is the argument over jurisdiction between the Pakistan People’s Party and the Muttahida Qaumi Movement in Sindh. The situation can degenerate into chaos reminiscent of the 1990s if their coalition falls apart.

That so far it hasn’t is only because President Asif Zardari knows, notwithstanding what his party men have to say, that the PPP alone cannot manage Sindh without the goodwill of the MQM just as it couldn’t in the 1990s. Now the MQM’s support is more crucial.

The MQM would surely not agree to the Karachi nazim being just a municipal mayor, though no one else is as lovingly remembered by the citizens of Karachi as Jamshed Nusserwanji Mehta or Abdul Sattar Afghani. At the same time the MQM must also realise that it cannot be as powerful as it was under Musharraf’s law and personal patronage.

It is necessary to draw a clear line between the civic and regulatory functions of the district and provincial governments. For instance, it is absurd for the province to demand control of the construction of buildings, water and sanitation.

It is equally absurd for the district to build universities and neglect primary education. To construct flyovers and let footpaths crumble makes little civic sense.

The sum of Rs700m invested in a car parking plaza that lies empty could have changed living conditions for a million slum dwellers.

Demarcation of the local and provincial spheres of activity to the satisfaction of both parties requires placing public interest above the person or party.

It is hard to expect leaders of the PPP and MQM to meet halfway in a situation where the nazim of Karachi is asking for the police and paramilitary garrisons to be placed under him while the provincial ministers would like to see him do no more than have the streets swept and drains cleaned.

Only a neutral commission would be able to determine what is administratively feasible and in the best interest of the public.

kunwaridris@hotmail.com