Punjab proposes three-tier LG system

PESHAWAR: Punjab in its new proposed Local Government (LG) system has put forward the proposal for a three-tier governance system with tehsil mayor elected directly through at-large election councillors on “first-past-the-post-basis (FPTP)” single member wards pattern.

The document shared with The News suggests that mayor’s election would be held on party basis and closed list, meaning hereby that the voters, who would be members of the tehsil councils, would be able to vote only for the candidate from the party that the voter belongs to.

It will be a system contrary to the one proposed by Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, which proposed that mayor should be elected directly on the open list where all the voters, through popular ballot, would be able to vote regardless of the party affiliation.

Punjab also proposed that the non-partisan Panchayats and Neighbourhood Councils would be the basic tier of the new system on the pattern of Village and Neighbourhood Councils in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. The document elaborated that mayor would be elected in single-member districts, according to the FPTP principle. This meant that the candidate with the plurality of votes would be declared the winner in the election for mayor while the losing party or parties would have no representation at all.

This is somehow a complex system, based on the analogy of the US Congress elections pattern. The council seats, if implemented, would be distributed among the parties in proportion to the votes obtained. They all would compete as a team, and election of candidates will follow rank order in each party’s list. The mayor in the proposed system has been given authority to induct a small cabinet of professionals to ensure better governance.

However, during a recent meeting on the Local Government system for Punjab, Prime Minster Imran Khan expressed concern over it and said that large single member wards would likely lead to higher cost of elections. Besides, he felt there would be potential risk of councillors getting involved in rent seeking to set aside their election expenses.

In addition, as a return for their votes, the councillors would demand funds for development in their wards and denying them funds could reduce their interest in the system. This would definitely affect quality of service delivery.

The Punjab Local Government & Community Development (LG&CD) Department on December 19 presented the proposed system to the prime minister and informed him that there had been complete consensus over the constitution of rural local governments at tehsil level instead of district level and an urban local government for each city, which would come to around 200.

There was also consensus that a Panchayat for each Mauza in the Punjab (around 22,000) and Neighbourhood Councils for urban areas should be elected on non-partisan basis. It was agreed that local governments would be politically, functionally and fiscally empowered to ensure development at grassroots level on a sustainable basis. However, no decision could be arrived at with regards to the electoral system for tehsil level and urban local governments.

The document suggests that in addition to a new local government law, the proposed reforms would require legislation to address spatial planning issues, urban property registry and bringing in an improved immovable property tax regime.

It said that a separate law would be required to constitute non-partisan Panchayats and Neighbourhood Councils as an abundant caution to avoid conflict with court judgments.

The final draft laws are proposed to be laid before the provincial assembly within next two weeks. The concerned quarters have also shown readiness for holding elections by the end of May 2019 as the term of current local governments is expiring on December 31, 2021.

It said that there are 194 cities in the province to be governed through one Metropolitan Corporation, eight large cities having Municipal Corporations, eight intermediate cities municipal corporations with 300,000 to 500,000 population and 98 small cities would have Class-B municipal committees to cater for population of 25,000 to 50,000.

As per the directives of the prime minister, the officials of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Local Government Elections and Rural Development Department (LGE&RDD) told this scribe on Tuesday that high-ups of the LG&CD Department and LGE&RDD are meeting regularly to bring about uniformity in their respective proposed systems so that a homogenous local governance system could be introduced in both the provinces.