Friday, Sep 07, 2012
Islamabad: An ordinance on setting up local government bodies, like municipalities, in Sindh province was promulgated by the provincial governor on Friday after an agreement between the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) and Muttahida Quami Movement (MQM).
But the Awami National Party (ANP), a minor partner in the Sindh government, immediately withdrew from the provincial ruling coalition led by the PPP in protest at the decree.
The People’s Metropolitan Corporations Ordinance 2012 was issued by MQM’s Sindh Governor Dr. Ishratul Ibad after several days of negotiations between the two major parties in Sind, where PPP’s Qaim Ali Shah is chief minister.
Under the ordinance five cities in the province — Karachi, Hyderabad, Sukkur, Larkana and Mirpurkhas — will have metropolitan corporations to be headed by mayors. The provincial capital, Karachi, will have 18 towns.
The remaining part of the province will have districts where district councils will be formed to run the local affairs.
It remains unclear when local government elections will be held in Sind. The other three provinces - Punjab, Khyber Pakthunkhwa and Balochistan - are yet to come up with legislation on local government system in the respective region.
A grassroots level system of elected local governments was in vogue during the regime of former military president Pervez Musharraf, but it lapsed after his exit in 2008 and has not revived so far under the democratic rule in the country.
ANP, which is largely a Pashtun party and runs the government in northwestern Khyber Pakthunkhwa province, announced its lawmakers would boycott sessions of the two houses of parliament and the Sindh assembly.
The party’s Sindh chief, Senator Shahi Syed called the new local government ordinance “a black law” and said ANP was kept of the deliberations between PPP and MQM. He said ANP had pulled out its lone minister from the Siundh government.
Shahi said the new law was against rights of people of Sindh and that it had been made to “appease” the MQM, which has traditionally had electoral dominance in Karachi and some other Sindhi urban centres, driving its support from Urdu-speaking people.
Legislators of ANP, which is also part of the PPP-led federal government, walked out of a session of the Senate, the upper house of the parliament, in Islamabad in protest over the Sindh ordinance.
Earlier, speaking in the house, ANP senator Haji Adeel said a conspiracy was being hatched for division of Sindh MQM’s Raza Haroon said in Karachi that equal facilities wold be provided to dwellers in Sindh under the new local government system.
Sindh governor Dr. Ibad told the media that consensus was reached on the ordinance under the guidelines of President Asif Ali Zardari and MQM chief Altaf Hussain, who both deserve felicitation.
By Mohsin Ali Correspondent By Mohsin Ali Correspondent
Gulf News 2012. All rights reserved.
