Parliamentarians pledge to support amendment to Article 140-A

Islamabad
Parliamentarians pledged to support the move of a constitutional amendment in the Article 140-A of the Constitution providing timeframe to hold local government elections.
They were speaking at a national consultation on constitutional protection of local governments organised by AAWAZ programme consortium partners, including Strengthening Participatory Organisation (SPO), Aurat Foundation, Sungi Development Foundation and South Asia Partnership Pakistan (SAP-PK). The dialogue was the continuation of AAWAZ programme’s ‘AAWAZ Utha’ campaign on local governments strengthening.
Apart from civil society members, prominent legislators particularly members of Parliamentary Committee on Electoral Reforms, attended the consultation. The legislators regarded the dialogue a timely initiative of the AAWAZ programme as the Committee on Election Reforms is likely to submit the recommendations to the National Assembly on strengthening local governments in Pakistan.
Prominent among the parliamentarians included Senator Mohsin Laghari, Senator Farhatullah Babar, Senator Mian Ateeq, Naeema Kishwar, Senator Sitara Ayyaz, MPA Maliha Khan, MPA Anisa Zeb Tahir Kheli, and former MNA Dr. Araish Kumar.
The dialogue between parliamentarians and civil society organsation concluded with consensus that strengthening local governments requires both constitutional protections by National Assembly as well as change of mindset of the provincial governments to devolve powers at the local levels through National Finance Commission.
“The local government system needs constitutional protection to be more effective and efficient in Pakistan because it lost its sustainability due to lack of legal authorisation,” said SPO Chief Executive Naseer Memon at the opening of consultation.
Aurat Foundation Chief Operating Officer Naeem Mirza said that although Article 140-A provides adequate constitutional, political, administrative and economic provisions for holding local government elections by provincial government but unfortunately provincial governments avoid the devolving the power to local governments and hence always use delaying tactics to hold LG elections, and thus obstruct its true soul by making it less authorised at local level while implementation.
MNA and member Parliamentary Committee on Electoral Reform Naeema Kishwar said the Committee proposed 145 days for re-election of local government. “The committee is also working on other concerns like number of polling stations and proposed each polling station after one kilometre. The committee also proposed training of polling agents and political workers,” she further said.
She further said that the sub-committee of the Committee on Electoral Reforms will put these recommendations on National Assembly’s website, and hence the civil society and human rights activists may analyse and suggest further changes.
“According to 18th Amendment, it is the responsibility of the provincial government to play their role in devolving powers to districts through local government system,” said Sungi Development Foundation Chief Executive Sajid Mansoor Qaisrani.
Senator Aneesa Zaib Tahirkheli condemned the decision of provincial government not to hold elections on specific seats directly and also focused that this is against the law to deprive the voters from their right to choose their representatives directly because in this way, true representation would not come in front.
Political activists, researcher and Chief Executive of Centre for Civic Education Zafarullah Khan demanded that local government elections should be held directly on special seats as done in Balochistan and KP and they further added that all political parties and civil societies is condemning this act of provincial government.
Senator Farhatullah Babar said that political parties challenged this amendment in court and hoped that court would do justice in this case. He added that devolution of power is mandatory at the moment to serve the interest of common people in Pakistan. “Consistence efforts are required to make amendments in the constitution,” he added.
MPA Maliha Khan said local government system is the basic unit of the democracy and the democratic process would remain incomplete without strengthening the local government system.