Local government: Parties pore over drafts of law

Members say they will only comment when they finish reading the documents.

KARACHI:

The debate over a system of local government for Sindh continues in the offices of political parties in Karachi, as the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) and Pakistan Muslim League-Functional (PML-F) are poring over the drafts presented by the PPP and MQM.

According to the MQM’s Wasay Jalil, the party’s internal five-member team discussed the draft given by the PPP on Wednesday and will continue discussions on Thursday.

The party is scheduled to meet with the PPP on December 10.

“It is still under discussion and we will inform the media [of developments] accordingly,” Jalil said. “The main point is that the system has to be for the benefit of Sindh province.”

The PML-F’s Imtiaz Shaikh told The Express Tribune that the party was also still studying the drafts given by the PPP and the MQM and so would only be in a position to comment once it had finished reading through the comprehensive documents. However, Shaikh’s understanding is that the PPP’s draft is still “more or less like the 1979 local government act.”

“There is nothing new in it. The MQM has also shared its draft with us and it appears to be a replica of the 2001 law,” he said.

“These two proposals have entirely different and opposite concepts and there is no ‘meeting point’ in the two - so this is quite difficult. We are ready to mediate between the two parties and we have also presented our own formula, which is a mix of the two.”

The PML-F may meet the MQM on Thursday and also expects to meet the PPP soon. “The PPP said we would meet after Muharram so we will know then.”

The MQM has repeatedly said that it did not want to revert to the 1979-era system of governance but it would be willing to accept any features that were workable. Party leaders have said that the MQM’s draft has improvements on the Sindh Local Government Ordinance, 2001, based on its experience with working at the local government level.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 8^th, 2011.