LAHORE, May 14: The PML-N doesn’t believe that the local elections to be held during the next few months will be free and fair, but it is still determined to take part in them whether they are held on a party or non-party basis. “The PML-N will not stay out of the electoral process, however one-sided it may be,” party’s Punjab chief organizer Zulfikar Khosa said while talking to Dawn here on Saturday.

He said he had visited all 34 districts of the Punjab to oversee the party’s reorganization, and during his meetings with party leaders he had also reviewed preparations for the local elections. The party, he noticed, was fully prepared to contest the elections.

About the number of candidates his party could put up, Mr Khosa said he was not in a position to answer the question at this juncture. However, he recalled that at the time of 2002 elections, many PML-N candidates, who had been awarded tickets, had withdrawn from the contest under severe pressure from intelligence agencies.

They had told the party that they could not afford the consequences of staying in the field, he said.

In his opinion the same agencies would try to intimidate the PML-N people in the local elections. But, he said, the party would resist all pressures.

Answering a question, Mr Khosa said it was rather premature to say about the parties with which the PML-N would cooperate in the local elections.”The matter has not come under discussion at any stage so far.”

The PML-N leader said local bodies was purely a provincial subject, as it was not mentioned in the Federal Legislative List or the Concurrent Legislative List. But, he said, it was regrettable that Gen Pervez Musharraf was saying it again and again that local bodies were his institutions and he would protect them. This approach, he argued, was in conflict with the very concept of the devolution of power.

He said it was also strange that educational qualification for the district nazim, who controlled more than a dozen departments under the new system, was matriculation. But for the MPAs and MNAs, who could get assistance from their respective assemblies and fellow legislators, graduation was a precondition.

He said the experience of the past four years had established that the district government system in its present shape had failed to solve people’s problems. Instead, he alleged, it had added to the problems of the people.

Corruption, which the rulers had pledged to uproot, had grown over the past few years and the performance of the police and other departments was far from satisfactory.

The PML-N leader said voters were waiting for the day when the rulers would match their words with deeds.

A friction was going on between the assembly members and the district nazims. Bureaucracy, too, was non-cooperative. As a consequence, the situation was worsening by the day, he said.

Mr Khosa recalled that the local elections had been held on a non-party basis. But the day the results were announced, the ruling party started forcing the nazims of other parties to join hands with the PML-Q. Some of the elected nazims switched allegiance in the presence of the chief minister while other did so in the presence of ministers and advisers.

Those on opposition benches, he said, were having to face a worse situation as the nazims did their best to crush them to please their bosses.

He said it was regrettable that funds of billions of rupees, spent or misspent by the local councils during their four-year term, had not been audited.

Ironically, he said, the sitting nazims or administrators who would replace them, would supervise the electoral process. Since the administrators were to be appointed by the chief minister, their ‘impartiality’ could be well imagined, he said.

The PML-N leader said all arrangements made by the rulers were sufficient to establish that the local elections would not be free and fair. Still, he said, the opposition would not leave the field open. He believed that the PML-N had its roots among people and it would prove its popularity in the elections.