THE Supreme Court’s ire is understandable. On Friday, the chief justice asked why his predecessor’s directive for holding local government elections by Nov 15 had not been carried out.

The response by those representing the provincial governments in question was a pathetic resort to legal and administrative nostrums to justify inaction on the issue. And when Sindh’s assistant advocate general apologised to the chief justice, the latter replied he ought to apologise to the Constitution which had been violated. The chief justice wondered why the provincial governments had to wait for the judiciary to act instead of acting on their own.

The court seemed displeased when the Sindh AAG said he had prepared a draft law that would authorise the ECP to carry out the delimitation of constituencies. The chief justice asked why the law had not been made earlier, and that even if an ordinance were promulgated within a week, it would still not be possible to hold the polls by Nov 15.

The court was also witness to the KP government’s quarrels with the ECP when its advocate general said the election body had not agreed to the provincial government’s request for electronic voting and to hold the polls in phases for security reasons. As for Punjab, its additional advocate general blamed the federal government for failing to respond to the suggestions it had made with regard to the ECP’s power to delimit the constituencies.

The provinces’ recourse to administrative and semi-legal excuses betrays their anxiety to evade local government elections because they are not sure how the people will vote and provincial lawmakers feel their authority will be challenged.

While Punjab and Sindh had a problem with delimitation, KP had no such issue and should have gone ahead with the polls. Instead, the KP government, too, has fallen in line with the other two provinces, as if in an unholy alliance, to deny grass-roots democracy to their people.

The ECP too cannot escape the blame for this mess; it gave Jan 8 last as the date for the polls and then requested the court for a postponement since the date was unrealistic. However, the ECP’s point that delimitation is not possible without a census is valid.

For that exercise, it is the federal government that has to stir itself. In other words, all those who matter — the federal government, the three provinces and the ECP — have combined to deny grass-roots democracy to the people.

Published in Dawn, October 6th, 2014