Punjab Assembly : ''Undemocratic practice

The Punjab Assembly (PA) has passed the Punjab Local Government Bill (PLGB) 2013 in the absence of the opposition. The entire opposition was attending their All Parties Conference being held in a local hotel to discuss the local body elections laws after walking out of the Assembly session in protest. The leader of the opposition, Mahmood ur Rashid, had requested the Speaker to provide more time to the Assembly to discuss the bill. Almost 17 amendments had been proposed by the opposition, and 13 by a group of treasury MPAs led by Chaudhry Tahir Ahmed Sindhu. All the amendments were turned down. They were not even taken up for debate. The Punjab Law Minister Rana Sanaullah criticized his party’s MPAs for demanding amendments to clauses they thought inappropriate. One of the key demands of the members of the treasury was to hold party-based elections. Another procedural flaw was that the bill was not circulated among the members of the opposition to get their final opinion. The opposition parties have issued a joint declaration at their conference, demanding a constitutional cover to the local government as they consider the newly passed Act against Article 140-A of the constitution that talks about devolving political, administrative and financial responsibility and authority to the elected representatives of the local governments. A province-wide protest will be staged while legal recourse will be taken to address the anomalies of the Act deliberately overlooked by the treasury. The entire Act is seen by the opposition as a blatant negation of law and the rules of business of lawmaking. What was the hurry in passing the law, and what fears were looming in the minds of the ruling party that they had to ramrod the bill through the Assembly, setting the worst form of dictatorial precedent? It is highly unlikely that any lawmaking under this bill will move smoothly or benefit the very people for whom this entire exercise of conducting local body elections is being carried out. Provisions such as holding non-party elections, placing district health and education under provincial control and giving power to the Punjab government to suspend local mayors are considered dictatorial with a design to hold on to the levers of power. According to the leader of the opposition in the PA, the power given to the Chief Minister to dismiss local mayors resembles former Article 58(2)(b) of the constitution, whereby the President had the power to dismiss parliament. According to the opposition, the ruling party wants to retain its hold on the budgetary decisions of education and health. The manner in which the Act was framed and passed is a disservice to democracy by the democratic elected parliamentarians. Instead of adopting an inclusive approach, welcoming debate and discussion, the ruling PML-N rushed into adopting the bill unilaterally. Since the passage of the 18th amendment that provided the much awaited autonomy to the provinces, a practice of doing things independently by the federating has crept in. Every province has drafted the local government law to suit its own political considerations. The Sindh Assembly witnessed the same uproar, as was experienced in the PA, when the Sindh Local Government Act, 2013 was passed, ignoring the concerns of the opposition. Two provinces are holding party-based elections while the largest province Punjab is going for non-party elections. Autonomy does not mean the complete negation of solidarity of the federation and uniformity of laws among the provinces. It perhaps meant giving more power to the provinces to tackle the day to day business promptly and efficiently so that the miseries of the people could be alleviated without delay caused by procedural hiatus. The same is true for establishing local governments, precisely to serve citizens at their doorstep. The role of the PA Speaker has been disappointing. By denying the right to debate and discuss the Act, the Speaker showed a partisan attitude. He gave Law Minister Rana Sanaullah a free hand to get the PLGB passed in the absence of the opposition. This negation of democratic processes will go a long way in determining the fate of this Act, which will likely remain a bone of contention between the PML-N and the opposition. The net loser will again be the people. Are we in for a familiar five more years of agony?