Electoral poverty

Local government elections the seed-beds in which are sown political futures, and often the engines of change

Poverty can come in a variety of guises, and not all are obvious. The poverty that grinds at much of the population is obvious enough and needs no reiteration, but the poverty of thought and deed that lies behind the failure to hold local bodies elections is far less visible. Given that all the mainstream political parties loudly, and often, proclaim their admiration for democracy and all its associated processes, their failure to embrace local bodies elections may be seen as an aberration. Foot-dragging and procrastination appear to be the watchwords. Now the Supreme Court has ruled on October 20 that the Punjab and Sindh governments are to complete the legislation authorising the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) to delimit constituencies for the purpose of conducting local government elections by October 30. The Sindh Assembly has already passed the necessary legislation and completed the delimitation process a year ago, but the Muttahida Qaumi Movement and other smaller parties challenged it, this being the reason for the delay in local bodies elections.



Progress is too slow for the Supreme Court (SC) that is now attempting to speed up the pace of local election and rightly so. The SC bench has demanded a report on progress from the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P) government within the month — the K-P government wanted five months — and Sindh and Punjab have also had hurry-up orders winged in their direction. There does not appear to be much likelihood of an early resolution. The delimitation of constituency boundaries is contentious from a political party perspective almost everywhere in the country, not only in the large cities. There has been no census since 1998, and much has changed demographically in the last 16 years, not least the populations of some of the constituencies whose boundaries are to be delimited by the ECP.

Local government elections ought to be the cornerstone of the political life of every nation-state; they are the seed-beds in which are sown political futures, and often the engines of change. Change is the very last thing that some political parties want to see, especially if it affects their vote bank and perhaps, challenges dynasties.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 22^nd, 2014.

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