PESHAWAR, July 11: The Khyber Political Alliance (KPA), an all parties united front working against the old administrative system in Khyber agency, has asked the government to immediately hold the local bodies polls in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas.

Speaking at a news conference here at the Peshawar Press Club on Thursday, KPA convener Rehmat Shah Afridi and others expressed apprehensions that the government was reluctant to hold the local bodies elections in Fata.

They said the tribesmen had been demanding of the successive military and democratic governments to replace this decades-old repressive system and introduce adult franchise in the Fata, but none of them entertained their this rightful demand.

The present government, they said, had promised with them that it would hold local bodies polls in Fata, but, now it seemed that it was backing out.

The tribal intelligencia had presented a reforms package for the Fata to the government for its early implementation, but civilian bureaucracy was persistently opposing it, he added.

They said the so-called tribal elders and their masters in the political administration were opposed to the replacement of the Frontier Crimes Regulations, a repressive method of governance introduced by the British rulers, with a democratic system.

They claimed that pro-FCR Maliks (elders) were opposed to the reforms agenda of the present government.

They denied that the FCR system was based on their tribal customs.

“It is totally an alien system which has nothing to do with the tribal code of life. A handful of tribal elders, agents of the administration, wrongly paint it as a mirror of tribal life,” they added.