In the commissionerate system, bureaucrats will have the authority to run the districts.
JUBAIL, SAUDI ARABIA: After doing basically nothing for three to four days, during which time over 100 people lost their lives, the Sindh government has now come up with a ‘magic wand’ solution which it seems to believe will solve the city’s problems. The police order of 2001 has also been set aside and the old police law, which has its foundations in the Police Act of 1861 of British India, has been revived.
Let’s leave the present-day tussle between the ruling PPP and its ex-ally, the MQM, on these issues aside and review the pros and cons of the new changes. In the so-called commissionerate system, bureaucrats will have the authority to run the districts, a logical governance system for a colonial power, but not for a democracy. In the current system of nazims, these same bureaucrats can be held accountable by elected local government officials. As for senior police officers, they will not be answerable to the nazim but rather to commissioners and deputy commissioners. This, too, is a system that better suits a colonising power.
Ordinary Pakistanis need a system in which they can approach their elected representatives for resolving day-to-day issues, where they don’t have to wait for hours outside lavish offices of bureaucrats who are not answerable to them. This is not the time to turn back the clock on this particular issue.
Masood Khan
Published in The Express Tribune, July 12th, 2011.
