LAHORE:
Several participants of a seminar on Wednesday demanded that the local government system be revived under the Local Government Ordinance (LGO) 2001.
The seminar was organised by the Centre for Peace and Democracy and Strengthening Participatory Organisation at the premises of the South Asia Free Media Association. The speakers urged the government to hold local body elections immediately.
They claimed that most political parties, including Muttahida Qaumi Movement, Awami National Party, Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz, Pakistan Muslim League-Quaid and Pakistan Muslim League-Functional had endorsed the LGO 2001.
Zulfiqar Gondal, a PPP MPA, said that the local government system was meant to be a parallel government. He said that it had taken power away from elected members of provincial governments.
Omer Sarfaraz Cheema, a member of the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) said that his party supported the system despite its opposition to General Musharraf.
Published In The Express Tribune, June 28th, 2012.
COMMENTS (2)
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@A.Bajwa:
the idea of LG was president musharraf. the credit of putting it into place goes to general naqvi and daniyal aziz as you have mentioned. president musharraf was a true democrat. he wanted the system to be democratic, instead of hididng behind democracy like the current dictators we have.
One must compliment the Seminar. The provincial governments are making a hash of local governments which were a good democratic model. At least the colonial figure Deputy Commissioner was removed.
We should all urge provincial governments to stop reversing the forward process of local governments.Actually it was danyal Aziz who persuaded Musharaf to democratize the local governments.