ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani announced on Wednesday that elections for local bodies had been postponed till the improvement of law and order.

Local governments will be dissolved and administrators from the bureaucracy will be appointed to look after their affairs during the interim period.

The decision was taken at an inter-provincial meeting presided over by the prime minister. It was attended by chief ministers of Sindh, Balochistan and the NWFP, AJK prime minister, chief executive of the Northern Areas and the NWFP governor. Punjab was represented by its home minister.

‘Presently conditions are not conducive for holding local bodies elections,’ Mr Gilani said at a press conference after the meeting at the Prime Minister’s Secretariat.

He said provincial representatives had agreed that the local government was purely a provincial subject which had been taken over by the federal government by including it in the Sixth Schedule.

(According to APP, the prime minister said the decision of appointing administrators did not mean that the local government system would be abolished. ‘It has been unanimously agreed by the provinces that administrators will be appointed and the local bodies elections will be held after the law and order situation improves,’ he added.)

It was decided in the meeting that the prime minister, after consultations with representatives of the provinces, AJK and Northern Areas, would advise the president within four days to dissolve the local bodies in order to make certain legal changes, including restoration of magistracy, and to appoint ‘honest and neutral bureaucrats’ as administrators to run the local governments till the next elections.

The provinces, however, failed to reach a consensus on holding the twice-postponed national census and instead decided to reassess the security situation by the end of this year before starting the process.

The census was due in June. It was last held in 1998.

EDUCATION POLICY: The provinces disagreed with the draft national education policy, finalised by the federal education ministry. The federal cabinet deferred deliberations on the draft at the request of NWFP Chief Minister Amir Haider Khan Hoti, who said his province would submit its point of view by Monday.

The provinces were divided over the issue of bringing seminaries to the mainstream of national. They decided to make appropriate amendments within a fortnight to relevant laws to make the Zakat distribution system more effective and transparent.

In reply to a question about the Supreme Court’s order suspending the implementation of carbon surcharge on petroleum products and his government’s strategy to challenge the decision, Prime Minister Gilani said: ‘The Finance Bill was passed without any opposition by parliament which represents 160 million people and it was prepared in consultation with economic experts of international repute.’

BALOCHISTAN: The prime minister said he was in touch with Baloch leaders, the provincial chief minister and members of his cabinet to resolve the Balochistan issue.
A sub-committee of the federal cabinet, headed by Mian Raza Rabbani, was also working on a political solution to the problem, he added.

Mr Gilani said that some political leaders of the province were of the view that dialogue would be more productive than an all-party conference on Balochistan to resolve outstanding issues.

In reply to a question, the prime minister said the dispute over water between the provinces would be resolved in accordance with the 1991 water accord and no province would be deprived of its share.