THE president’s announcement that the local bodies system will be introduced in Fata next year is welcome and should take the tribal areas one step closer to joining mainstream Pakistan. Yet it is fair to ask what the central and provincial governments are doing to revive elected local bodies in the rest of the country. Pakistan has been without representative local governments for about three years, and as things stand it is unlikely that LG polls will be held before next year’s general election. The Sindh government has pleaded before the provincial high court that it cannot hold polls for a number of reasons, while indications from Punjab are that the provincial government wants to hold LG polls after the general election. Balochistan has also yet to set a date. In fact, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa is the only province which has given a tentative time frame — October or November — for holding polls.

In Fata it will take time to evolve a system. Though LG polls there would be a positive step, local councils will initially only be introduced in major population centres. But in the rest of Pakistan the basic infrastructure of local governance exists. It may be imperfect and in need of improvement, but it is there and if the political stakeholders wish to make positive changes to it, they should do so through legislation instead of perpetually suspending the system. The main issue, it seems, is that of having the political will to finalise legislation and announce a schedule for local polls. Any petty considerations political parties may have — such as controlling local governments to influence polling in general elections — should be dismissed so that people can have a representative set-up at the local level. Laying the groundwork for a new system is commendable, but suspending an already working system makes no sense.