LB polls – again

Despite it being constitutionally mandated, elections for local government were not held for over a decade. After countless delays, it took a Supreme Court intervention before the provincial governments were willing to conduct local bodies polls. Even though the elections have now been held, there is a further problem in the form of the ECP deciding to indefinitely postpone polling for reserved seats in Punjab and Sindh. The reason the ECP gave was that the matter was sub judice but there have been petitions against elections before without the elections themselves needing to be postponed. The ECP has also decided that the polls will be done on a proportional system instead of by a show of hands of elected councillors, as per the original plan. There is no compelling reason for the ECP to have done this since it is unlikely to change the outcome, making this delay mystifying and unneeded. The PPP has strongly condemned the postponement, claiming this shows the ECP is doing the bidding of other parties.

While there was no justifiable reason to postpone elections for reserved seats, it is hard to see how the postponement helps any particular political party. In Punjab, the PML-N swept the local bodies polls and so will get most of the reserved seats too. Thus a postponement does not help it. In Sindh, the PPP and MQM divided seats in the rural and urban areas of the province respectively and that division too will be reflected in the reserved seats. It is also rich of the PPP to blame others for causing delays in local bodies polls. This is the party that has prevented the polls from being held for more than a decade because it has been in charge of the government in Sindh and did not want to hand over power to the MQM in Karachi. Even now that the polls have been held, the PPP is delaying the swearing in and handing over of power to the new mayor. It wants to continue wielding power by reserving the right to make police appointments in Karachi. It is also not too happy about having to hand over development funds to local bodies members from the MQM. The ECP certainly deserves blame and criticism but no one is in a worse position to offer that criticism than the PPP.