PPP’s wrong choices

Whatever little powers were left with the local governments in Sindh have been snatched away with one stroke by the Pakistan Peoples’ Party’s (PPP) provincial government. Following the passage of the Local Government (Amendment) Bill 2021 in the Sindh Assembly on November 26, all the health and education institutions run by the municipal bodies will be taken over by the provincial government.

Now, according to former Mayor of Karachi Mustafa Kamal, the Karachi Metropolitan Corporation (KMC) has been left only with the responsibility of cleaning public toilets. Unfortunately, the number of this basic amenity is too small in the megapolis to keep the Local Government officials occupied.

Yes, since the restoration of “pure, undiluted democracy” in the country in 2008, the PPP has one by one seized all the key civic functions and powers, which once were the domain of the city governments.

The Sindh Government transformed the Karachi Building Control Authority (KBCA) into the Sindh Building Control Authority (SBCA) and grabbed its control. It set up the Sindh High Density Development Board to manage and allow the construction of high-rise buildings in expensive and densely populated parts of Karachi.

These two moves, while empowering the Sindh Government, also ensured that the representatives of the urban areas had no say in town planning or approval of the new buildings. No wonder, since the creation of the provincial government-run SBCA and the High Density Board, there are growing complaints of massive corruption in the construction sector as new high-rises are being allowed without ensuring sufficient water and natural gas supplies, a proper sewerage system or even the allocation of parking spaces. This urban disaster continues to unfold with the latest announcement by the Chief Minister’s Law Adviser Murtaza Wahab that the Sindh Government has prepared an ordinance to stop the anti-encroachment operation and plans to set up a commission to regularize illegally constructed buildings. Doesn’t it smell of official-sanctioned corruption?

Similarly, the Karachi Water & Sewerage Board (KWSB) – once the domain of the city government – is now under the provincial government, which also rules the lucrative Malir and Lyari Development Authorities.

The latest move of taking over the education and health functions by the Sindh government has now effectively made the local governments more or less redundant.

No wonder Sindh’s urban-based political parties are up in arms against the Sindh Local Government (Amendment) Bill 2021. From the Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan (MQM-P) to the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf (PTI) and from the Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) to the Pak Sarzameen Party (PSP) – all have raised their respective banners of protest. Yet, they all seem to lack options which can force the PPP to concede at least some powers to the local governments.

The bitter fact is that if all the elected representatives from the urban areas unite and try to empower the local governments through their vote in the Sindh Assembly, they won’t be able to do it because they lack numbers. Therefore, decisions about the urban areas will continue to be taken by the representatives hailing from the rural areas in line with the golden democratic principles in which there is no room for inclusivity.

Staging trouble-making agitation and calling general strikes is also not an option for any of the opposition parties in Sindh because of their objective constraints. The MQM is now just a shadow of its past and appears to have lost its independent decision-making. One sees a lot of posturing from the MQM leaders, but then they fail to walk the talk. The PTI – the biggest party to emerge from Karachi in 2018 elections – also won’t like to shake the apple cart of Sindh, or especially stoke any trouble in Karachi because it is in the driving seat at the center. In its remaining term in power, the PTI would like to have whatever little semblance of stability it can have in the country’s financial and commercial hub. Therefore, it too won’t go beyond issuing angry statements.

The Jamaat-e-Islami, despite its strong organizational structure and efforts to expand its base in Karachi, does not have the popular penetration to pose any real challenge to the Sindh Government. The same is the case of tough-talking Mustafa Kamal’s PSP.

Option three – challenging the amendment in the court – as exercised by the PSP by filing a petition in the Sindh High Court against the passage of the latest bill also gives one little hope. A similar petition filed by MQM’s former mayor, Waseem Akhter, has been pending in the Supreme Court of Pakistan since 2017. The petitioner has asked for financial and administrative powers to the local governments in line with the Article 140-A of the Constitution and sought constitutional protection for this third tier of representation as given to the federal government. But honourable judges appear reluctant to decide the legislative matter in the court.

The urban-based political parties will have to think of some out-of-box strategy to empower local governments, but for this they must find some allies and partners in the rural areas – not just politicians, but civil society members and intellectuals as well.

As a matter of fact, devolution of power to the grassroots level is a progressive, modern and a pro-people cause. The PPP is swimming against the tide by concentrating powers at the provincial level, revealing its undemocratic mindset and anti-people bias.

However, the urban parties because of their own myopic and opportunist politics fail to capitalize on the weaknesses and unprincipled stance of the PPP in this particular case.

The biggest mistake which parties like the MQM commit on a regular basis is that they always present the case of the empowerment of the local bodies on ethnic lines or by highlighting the rural-urban divide. This line of argument or the demand for a separate province goes in favour of the PPP and, without saying, strengthens its own ethnic or rural Sindh card, although ordinary citizens in the smaller cities, towns and villages of the province have suffered equally, or perhaps much more at the hands of the poor governance and rampant corruption of the PPP leadership.

The urban-based parties should refrain from committing this mistake and instead try to unite the people on the grounds of their problems. The messaging should start from Karachi and Hyderabad where people belonging to one community or ethnicity face the same issues and problems as that of the other.

A multi-ethnic city like Karachi, and a multi-ethnic province like Sindh cannot afford to ignite the self-consuming flames of ethnic politics. The results would be disastrous.

All those forces which want empowered local bodies have to explain to the masses that they are asking these powers not just for Karachi or Hyderabad but for the entire province and the country.

Giant cities like Karachi and even smaller cities cannot grow and progress until their mayors and civic bodies are given both financial and administrative powers. The PPP, which emerges as an absolute villain in this case, should rethink its myopic stance. If the party is serious in reviving its fortunes and placing its young leader Bilawal Bhutto Zardari at the Prime Minister House in some near or distant future, it cannot do so by ignoring the aspirations and demands of Sindh’s urban centres.

Empowering the third tier of government and devolving powers is the only way forward. The sooner the PPP and the other mainstream parties realize this, the better.

The writer is Editor-in-Chief, Bol Media Group