29th March, 2020/1862

Turning the Local Global

By
Asad Ejaz Butt
Introduction
The 18th Amendment has done little to change the status of local governments in Pakistan.
Despite the application of several iterative reforms so that they are able to tackle the subjects
devolved to them, the performance of local governments seems to lack essence. The passage of
the 18th Amendment meant that local governments would be placed at the center of the
country’s development campaign. They had to act as the development pivot. However, in all
safety, one can say that local governments under Musharraf were far more organized than they
are now under an arguably democratic polity. And no matter how good the 18 th Amendment
looks on paper, it has definitely fell short of the object that set it in motion. Not only local, but
the systemic cracks in the provincial and federal governments have been exposed regularly by
external shocks that lay bare the huge capacity deficits prevalent within these organizations.
The idea of devolution and empowerment is not merely to transfer a few provincial and federal
subjects to the local governments. This may result in modelling of the local governments
against the governance models adopted in the federal or in the provinces. They may not be
great examples to follow especially in the case of the developing world. Local governments
following such transfers would continue to stay local. The idea is to look at the successful local
governance models followed around the world and remodel local governments to bring them in
line with the international best practices. Local governments therefore have to be turned
global. This is where Pakistan has seriously failed. Despite making a historic legislative
advancement by passing the 18th Amendment, Pakistan has not been able to provide local
governments the status that they deserved. Much of this can be understood by looking at the
trajectory of empowerment and strengthening of local governments in Pakistan. The context on
how their structure and functionality have been conveniently molded to suit political interests
yields an intriguing analysis. It is interesting to observe how political considerations determined
the outlook and complexion of governance that was to take place in Pakistan.
Trajectory
In the aftermath of the 18 th Amendment, Pakistan had to make the exercise of devolving
powers, both financial and administrative, to the provinces. The concurrent list was abolished
which meant that subjects that were dealt with both at the federal and in the provinces were
automatically dropped from the federal purview to become provincial. This was a transitionary
step in the devolution process - a bigger and more difficult leap forward had to be devolution
from the provinces to the districts. It’s taken Pakistan 10 years since 2010 when the
Amendment was passed, dozens of dossiers, reports and policy papers but local governments
continue to operate as feebly as they did back in 2010. An under resourced office of the Deputy
Commissioner (DC), few Assistant Commissioners (in larger districts) and disempowered local
political executive who is neither elected on a continuous basis nor provided adequate and
sufficient funds to keep the wheel of development moving. Between 2009 and 2015, not a
single local bodies election was held meaning that the districts operated only under the
administrative control of the District Coordination Officer (DCO), holder of an office whose
sanctity and writ had significantly waned after the Local Government Ordinance of 2001. I shall
come to discuss that in detail later in the piece.
It is imperative to imagine the empowerment and strengthening of local governments in
context of the larger political system. The different roles that the local governments assume
during civilian and military regimes is an interesting way to understand how local governments
interact with the larger political system and why today, they stand where they do. During the
times of the military, greater emphasis was placed on strengthening local governments. The
opposite unfortunately happened when democratic rule was established. Ayub Khan’s Basic
Democracies Order (BDO -1959) sought to create a multi-tiered system of local government and
empowered it against higher-order political organizations that were disbanded through the
military takeover in 1958. Thereafter, this became a regular practice of the military rulers.
Whosoever came to power, obviously did so by overthrowing the mainstream political
leadership. However, the demands of governance required that there be some level of political
representation which necessitated that the military rulers would undertake the laborious
exercise of creating a parallel leadership which would then have to be provided some franchise.
Most of the political leadership created in the breeding grounds of the military became
politically irrelevant as soon as the reins of power were transferred to the civilian leadership.
They just simply vanished.
The BDO did promise some franchise to the local political executive but did so by making them
subservient to a controlling authority comprising the DC, Commissioner and other members of
the local bureaucratic elite. Ayub’s local government was also essentially used to legitimize the
controversial Constitution of 1962 that was seen to strengthen the armed forces at the loss of
other institutions apart from also trying to forge the establishment of an apparently
presidential system. One therefore must understand that strengthening local governments by
allowing space for newly elected local representatives and arming them with some financial
and administrative powers at the tehsil and zila levels is not a choice of the military rulers but a
necessity. The mainstream leadership that the parallel local political representatives created by
the military are expected to replace often operate at the higher level of politics. Their interest
in the provincial and national politics leaves space open for infiltration at the local level. Even to
date, almost all mainstream political parties seem to be rather disorganized at the local level
having little or no party structure in the zila, tehsil or mouza. Most democracies that have been
established in Pakistan have built on this rather undemocratic premise.
Bhutto was opposed to the bureaucracy, not bitterly per se but his actions did as much to
contain the bureaucracy as they did to reform it. His era is considered to be one of discomfort
for the bureaucrats who found themselves weak, incapacitated and effectively sidelined often
performing menial and routine tasks. From the very outset, Bhutto was eager to regulate the
functioning of the bureaucracy. He brought a system of bureaucratic reform that divided the
executive branch of the government into 12 cadres all put into a common system that provided
for a joint training of the different cadres of the civil service and bound them by a set of service
rules to be codified into the estacode. The making of these rules was mandated by Article 99 of
the newly passed 1973 Constitution of Pakistan. He abolished constitutional guarantees for civil
servants which further added to the insecurities that civil servants felt during his time at the
office. The CSP which was once the linchpin of Pakistan’s bureaucracy and spearheaded the
country’s initial development process was made subservient to the jiyalas of the PPP who
belonged to a political class not equipped with the tools and training needed to create and
execute policies and development plans. This resulted in conflicts and governance failures that
doubled the Government’s disadvantage during a period when the nationalization of private
enterprise demanded better administration. Sidelining both the private sector and the
bureaucracy was a recipe for disaster. However, as Pakistan still holds onto the common system
of recruitment and the service rules established under Bhutto, one begins to wonder if his
reforms were as bad as they are perceived to be.
As Cheema et.al1 point out, Zia followed in the footsteps of Bhutto by foregoing political
centralization to institute electoral representation at the local level. Like Ayub, whose primary
support base lay in the rural areas the allocations of which he had increased significantly as a
strategy to remove the urban bias strongly associated with his predecessors. Interestingly,
while the military empowered local governments, made efforts to remove the rural-urban
divide and provided them with some degree of representation, the provincial administration
retained suspension powers and the powers to quash resolutions of the local governments. The
bargain perhaps was to empower local government but not at the expense of the hierarchy that
placed the military administrators in the higher echelons of authority.
The Local Government Ordinance (LGO) of 2001 was promulgated under a military government
but to the great surprise of observers, it served to weaken the district bureaucracy. The
executive branch of the government under Musharraf did not feel as weak as did the newly
created office of the DCO who was now in many ways subordinating the District Mayor. Several
good officers who held the posts of DC and Commissioner prior to the change requested for
transfers to the provincial secretariat to avoid being answerable to the elected mayors who
they perhaps saw as offices poorly placed to supervise their functioning. The local bodies
elections of 2001 and 2005 saw strong local governments with significant amount of funds at
their disposal elected in the districts. The bureaucracy assumed a subsidiary role in the
1
Cheema, Ali, Asim Ijaz Khwaja, and Adnan Qadir. "Local government reforms in Pakistan: context, content and
causes." Decentralization and local governance in developing countries: A comparative perspective (2006): 257-
284.
development process. This however, was not a withdrawal of powers from the local
governments rather it was a change that empowered one local player at the expense of
another. It was later determined that the elected local bodies supervised by the military could
not yield the same development outcomes as did the bureaucracy. News agencies in those time
reported massive corruption and embezzlement of funds at the local level raising serious
concerns on the quality of governance taking place in the districts.
The re-emergence of a democratic policy in Pakistan in 2008 meant that while there would be
promises to empower local governments, the so-called democratic governments in the center
and the provinces would be reluctant in transferring authority to the districts which may run
them the risk of doing away with powers that many of them perceived as their own.
Transferring these to the local political executive who is elected on a non-party basis would
result in an irreversible dilution of administrative and financial powers. This was not acceptable
to any of the two parties that governed in the decade between 2008 and 2018. No local bodies
elections were held during the 5-year PPP rule which meant that the administrative space
vacated in the districts was filled by the bureaucracy. A new local bodies ordinance was
promulgated in 2013 that did not return magistracy powers to the Pakistan Administrative
Service however, it did restore the office of the DC and sought to distribute powers rather
equally between the DPO, DC and the District and Sessions Judge depending on the mandate
and requirements of their specific roles.
Conclusion
The empowerment and strengthening of local governments still remain a concern for Pakistan,
especially from the viewpoint of establishing a strong federation the precondition to which is
functioning and independent federating units. The true spirit of the 18 th Amendment and fiscal
federalism will be a distant dream until the decision-making powers are not devolved to the
lowest level.

The writer is a civil servant working for the Federal Government of Pakistan and ex-
Director of the Institute of Public Policy, Lahore. He can be reached via email @
asad.ejazb@gmail.com