Constitutional questions: ‘Maker’ of LG system, condemns Sindh govt

Former nazims want changes undone.

KARACHI:

The man famously known to have created local government, Daniyal Aziz, brought former nazims to make a public condemnation of the change to the commissionerate system at a press conference on Wedneday.

Aziz, also a former chairman of the National Reconstruction Bureau, was accompanied by leaders of the Local Council Association of Sindh. They wanted the commissionerate system and Police Act 1861 immediately withdrawn.

He said that the government’s objective was to damage democracy and he would start a campaign to make the public realise this. The first convention will be held in Sukkur on July 20. He said that by reviving the commissionerate system, the government has started a war against the judiciary.

For Aziz, the move was an unlawful act and went against Article 140A of the Constitution. It is a bid to bulldoze the governance system at the local level in the country and revive the old draconian laws of Zia’s martial law.

By reviving the commissionerate system and Police Act, the provincial authorities want to usurp the political, administrative, financial and democratic rights of local representatives, Aziz said.

He apprehended that after the revival of the commissionerate system, billions of rupees in development funds earmarked for the local governments in the provincial budgets would be misused and would open up a new era of loot and plunder by some vested interests in politics and bureaucracy.

Aziz said that the revival of the office of the district magistrate also contradicts the idea of the separation of the judiciary from the executive as was ensured in the Constitution.

The LCA leaders demanded of the government that the basic importance of Union Council should be accepted in the backdrop of Local Government Ordinance 2001. They said keeping in view the clause 77 and 78 of the ordinance, resources and authorities of the tehsil should be given to the union and the same of the union should be given to the village.  The former nazims demanded the government fully implement the 18th Amendment and warned of those who are working against its enforcement. They said those who tried to create hurdles in way of the future of Pakistan’s Constitutional obligations and democracy, could not succeed.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 14^th, 2011.