THE ECP has done well to refuse to allow the Punjab administration to push the local government elections to April. It should now hold its ground. Four years after the last elected councils left office, the province is still looking for reasons not to hold the polls. The reasons, though, keep changing. In August, the provincial authorities agreed to a window between Dec 15 and Jan 15. Two months later, they discovered that the months of December and January are foggy and cold, and that Ramazan would begin in February. None of this is news. Winter arrives every year, and the Ramazan calendar was not a surprise to anyone who signed off on the August consultations. LGs are the tier of the state closest to the people. They handle sanitation, water supply, street lighting, primary health and schooling, and local roads, and generally keep the town running. In functioning democracies, this is where citizens learn to hold someone accountable, and where future political leaders learn to govern. Provincial and federal parties know this, and many are uncomfortable with the fact. An elected mayor with a budget and a mandate is a rival centre of power. A commissioner or deputy commissioner who answers to the chief minister is not. So elections are delayed, laws rewritten whenever the government changes, and administrators fill the space that elected representatives should occupy.
Strengthening LGs
