KARACHI - Former National Reconstruction Bureau chairman Danyal Aziz has set afoot plans to start a protest campaign in favour of the Sindh People’s Local Government Ordinance 2012 as well as for early local bodies’ elections in the country. Aziz, while addressing a news conference at the Press Club, termed the new Sindh governance law as a model system for the other provinces, and exhorted them to adopt it and conduct local government elections under it.Flanked by former Sukkur nazim Syed Nasir Shah and others, the former NRB chief announced pro-SPLGO rallies from the platform of the All-Pakistan Local Councils’ Association – a body comprising former nazims, naib-nazims and councilors – across the country.Aziz was of the view that the third tier of government was the only source for the poor to get solution to their problems at their doorstep. “The masses have been deprived of health, education and other basic facilities in the absence of local governments,” he observed while adding, “Had representatives of local governments been elected, the damages from heavy rainfall and SITE factory inferno would have been contained.” To prove his point, the former official added that the third tier of governance of Pervez Musharraf-led government helped keep a check on the inflation and price-hike. “It proved equally good against crimes.” He, however, branded the 1979 local government system as anti-people, saying the elected representatives had no powers to handle affairs of their areas under it. Aziz censured the ruling PPP the way it promulgated the new law through an ordinance in the dead of the night. He was dismayed that the new governance law was not yet made public. He, however, acknowledged the ruling party’s efforts for the Sindh People’s Local Government Ordinance 2012, recalling that it had been enforced after the Sindh High Court ordered that local government elections be conducted within 90 days. The PPP and MQM blocs should have consulted other allies and nationalist forces on the new governance system for Sindh province, wished the former official. The former official told the media that Sindh was not divided into two systems of government under the new law, explaining that municipal corporations in Karachi and Hyderabad, and district councils in other parts of the province did exist even in 1979. He also asserted that the nationalist parties’ stance that land, revenue and certain other subjects should not be given to the mayors and district chairmen was honoured in the local government ordinance, which according to him, was progressive and a key to development in the province. Coming down hard on the PML-N and ANP for opposing the ordinance, Aziz questioned why the two groups were still continuing the local government system of former despot Musharraf.Talking to the media, former Sukkur nazim Nasir Shah also criticised the PPP’s way of enforcing the new law.