CM violating constitution, SLGO by keeping me powerless, says mayor

Karachi Mayor Waseem Akhtar has said the Sindh chief minister “is violating the constitution of Pakistan’s Article 140 (a) and the Sindh Local Government Ordinance 2013” by not giving powers to him.

He said this while talking to The News on Thursday when asked to comment on Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah’s remarks in the provincial assembly earlier in the day that those asking for powers should work within the powers given to them.

Akhtar said: “You [CM] are violating even those powers given by the Sindh government in the SLGO 2013.”

He was of the view that the chief minister was not empowered to construct mega projects because that was a clear violation of the SLGO. He added that only the mayor could work on mega projects.

He said the chief minister’s working on mega projects was another encroachment and a violation of the constitution.

“The local bodies elections were held on the orders of the Supreme Court and now we are again fighting in the court for powers and will get the powers from the court.”

Akhtar said: “We still reserve the right of protest, but the MQM- Pakistan is a peace-loving party and does not believe in violence.”

He said they would again go “to the court of the masses and achieve the powers of mayor through the power of masses”.

The mayor mentioned that he had earlier talked to all party members who had a consensus that the mayor should be empowered.

He said his party would raise the question in the KMC budget session to be held in the City Council hall on June 19.

A day earlier, the opposition leader in the Sindh Assembly had said that there was no chief minister for the province since Syed Murad Ali Shah had practically assumed the role of the Karachi mayor.

Khawaja Izharul Hassan of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan (MQM-P) made the remark during his speech on the Sindh budget for the financial year 2017-18 as the provincial legislature continued the debate for a sixth day.

He told the House that there were two mayors for the city: “One is elected [Waseem Akhtar] and the other is on-demand [CM Shah]”. He said the elected mayor had been rendered powerless so the CM was carrying out mayoral duties in his stead.

“If the CM is so eager to work as the mayor, then he should switch places with the mayor. I assume the mayor would not object to such a proposition.”

Waving a file in the legislature, he said it was full of notifications issued one after another by the Sindh government with the “mala fide intention to diminish the authority of the mayor to the extent that he has been deprived of the power to even transfer or post his subordinates”.

The opposition leader said the government had no intention of delegating the powers to the mayor, adding that the problem was not confined to the MQM-P because a Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) mayor would have the same limited authority.

He said that such an attitude with the local government’s representatives and agencies would make the people of Karachi think that they were being discriminated against while the rest of the province was receiving preferential treatment.

Referring to the earlier speech in the House by former CM Syed Qaim Ali Shah, Hassan said the ruling PPP should not take credit for holding LG elections in the province because it was on the Supreme Court’s orders that the polls were conducted across the country.

He urged the chief justice of Pakistan to take suo motu notice of the manner in which the Sindh government had implemented the LG system in the province, “virtually making a mockery of the system, which is considered a nursery of democracy”.

He said that a number of union committee chairmen in the city were without offices, adding that the officials belonged to all the political parties, including the MQM-P, the PPP, the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf and the Jamaat-e-Islami.

He added that the sorry state of affairs regarding the chairmen was not confined to Karachi, and that the same situation persisted in other districts of the province.

The MQM-P leader said that despite such a situation, the provincial government had not reserved funds for setting up offices for the chairmen, which meant that they could not competently discharge their responsibilities.

He said his party had no hope that the Sindh administration would delegate the powers to the elected LG representatives in accordance with the provisions of Article 140-A of the Constitution.

He added that a petition to this effect had already been filed in the top court. “We shall now seize the powers from the Sindh government instead of waiting for these powers to be delegated.”

He suspected that the provincial administration had assumed the task of reconstructing Karachi’s major thoroughfares only to “mint money”, as he had presented some budgetary figures showing that the reconstruction of University Road was carried out with inflated expenses.