Editoral-Capital self-rule-Dawn Editorial

There is a valid reason why the federal government should heed calls, as those made by participants in a seminar held in the capital recently, to introduce the local government system in Islamabad. For a decade now, since political power was devolved to the grass roots in the country, the over one million citizens of Islamabad have been denied their right to a similar system. They could not vote in the first and second LG elections. Denying them this right again will have a negative impact on citizens’ lives in terms of service delivery, particularly since the latter has been characterised by urban bias, poor transparency and the tendency to serve special interests. It will also reflect poorly on the government’s commitment to democracy.

What derailed the earlier attempt to introduce local government through the Islamabad Capital Territory Local Government Ordinance 2002 was the absence of what the National Reconstruction Bureau termed a ‘suitable framework’. There were major reservations against the idea of incorporating Islamabad’s urban areas into the LG system. By 2005, the year of the second LG elections, the jurisdiction of 20 union councils in Islamabad’s rural areas had been delineated but not in the urban areas.

Eight years have passed since the 2002 ordinance, which has lapsed, and the capital territory has even got its own high court. A suitable framework for local government in Islamabad incorporating both the rural and urban areas should have been worked out by now. In addition to being able to draw upon the experience of two terms of the LG system in the country, the federal government could also have taken a leaf from the experience of local government in other administrative capital territories in the world. Islamabad’s citizens should not be denied the right to vote for the third time in the next LG polls.

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