A photo of K-P Assembly. PHOTO: AFP
A select committee has approved the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P) Local Government (LG) Bill 2013 with a majority. However, differences over it still persist, with consensus reached on only one amendment suggested by the opposition parties.
The fifth and final meeting of K-P Assembly’s committee on Local Government was held in the conference room of the provincial assembly on Tuesday under the chair of Minister for Local Government Inayatullah Khan.
During the fourth meeting, committee members had unanimously withdrawn 26 clauses, postponed two and accepted one clause of the LG Bill, 2013 for necessary amendment.
Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) lawmaker Amna Sardar told The Express Tribune opposition members had expressed a note of dissent and disagreed over complications in the village and neighbourhood councils. “They wanted to hold elections on the basis of equal representation and on party basis on union council levels. However, the committee did not agree,” she said.
The lawmaker said only one of the opposition’s proposed amendment was agreed upon, which was extending the tenure of a nazim from three to four years. Sardar added the word ‘he’ was used for a nazim in the bill, and an amendment was made to include ‘she’ for a female nazim as well.
“A village council setup is not workable in this region because some villages have a smaller population and a council cannot be formed,” insisted Sardar, an opposition lawmaker.
The members of the select committee included provincial ministers Shah Farman, Yousaf Ayub Khan, Shahram Tarakai, K-P Assembly Deputy Speaker Imtiaz Shahid, MPAs Syed Jaffar Shah, Sardar Hussain Babak, Amina Sardar, Lutfur Rahman, Malik Munawar Khan, Sardar Aurangzeb Naluta, Shah Hussain and Akbar Hayat, among others.
Under the new local government setup, elections in village councils would be held on a non-party basis and on a party basis at tehsil and district council levels.
Political leaders vouch for ‘sustainable democracy’
Meanwhile at a seminar on ‘Democracy, Dialogue and Development’, participants said political parties need to play their role to ensure sustainable democracy.
The seminar was organised by the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa chapter of Liberal Forum Pakistan (LFP), an organisation working for democracy in the country. It was held at the Peshawar Press Club (PPC) on Wednesday, with leaders of various political parties including PML-N, Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-Fazl (JUI-F), Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) and Awami National Party (ANP) addressing the participants.
In the presence of LFP Central General Secretary Shamim Shahid and LFP K-P chapter President Muhammad Ayaz, PML-N leader Malik Riaz said short-lived democracies interspersed between years of dictatorship had negatively affected the democratic process over time.
JI leader Israrullah said democracy must not be limited to the day of elections. It needs to be established at the grass-roots level as well. “90% of the issues faced by people can be solved through the local government system and we hope for the local government setup to be established here soon.”
“There should be continuity and once an announcement is made about talks [with militants], it should be followed,” said Riaz while talking about the current law and order scenario.
Published in The Express Tribune, October 31st, 2013.
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