Chief Justice of Pakistan was speaking for every Pakistani when the other day he questioned the politicians — what’s the function of government when every other issue has to be investigated and looked after by judiciary? Take the case of Local Governments (LG) elections — the democratically elected provincial governments tried their best during last three years not to hold the LG elections and kept running municipal affairs through bureaucracy and ministerial cronies. Finally it was SCP who forced the provincial governments to hold LG elections. That started a series of excuses to defer the elections — constituency demarcations, electoral lists, amending LG laws, and what not.
LG elections in Sindh were held December last year; we are now in April without any local government in-placed — why, because government went on to change the mayor election procedure by ‘show of hands’ instead of ‘secret ballot’. SRemaining powers — education, health and local taxes transferred to district municipal committees (DMCs). One may presume that was not the intention of SCP when it forced provincial governments to hold LG elections in the first place — to have powerless mayors just to fulfill constitutional requirements in the name of third tier of government. We request SCP to see what’s going on in Sindh — it’s time to take suo moto notice of Sindh government’ ill intentions and reinstate LG powers per clause 140A of the constitution. When our politicians will come out of the ‘One Unit’ mentality?
MASOOD KHAN,
Saudi Arab, April 15.