“The debate on the scrapping of Musharraf’s devolution experiment cannot hide or ignore two key imperatives. First, that all elected political governments have an antipathy for local democracy at the expense of all known and accepted democratic norms and principles. Second, never has Pakistan been so much in need for building public institutions as against giving way to shortsighted vested interest”.

“But, the debate is marred by the district management group (DMG)’s obsession with their past glory and a desire to take the country back to the 19th century, if not earlier. The simple issue is that, while the DMG are not so powerful anymore, they have a got a soft ear to play up the genuine concerns of the political leadership relating to law and order. The question is if the DMG was the solution, why did TNSM succeeded in Swat in the first place in 1990s or the institution of Political Agent, another beacon of hope for many DMG walas, failed us in FATA?”.

“The reality is that political elites need to understand that while public oversight of the police is absolutely necessary, they can not have a free hand in using trained cadres of armed men at their disposal to use against their opponents and as a tool to perpetuate the system of patronage. The elected nazims are a good way to articulate development policy priorities. The police, however, at best be kept independent and under a strict public oversight mechanism”.

• Overwhelming majority of the public does not subscribe to the view that “non-uniformed civilian state was missing”. This is based on careful review of public participation in the debate being conducted over media. Some studies will also be released shortly that point to the same fact.
• “Frittering away of provincial governments’ authority”? I thought we were discussing local government and its authority. We then probably should do away with provinces as well and just have federal government exercise its “authority” throughout the country.
• “Musharraf-Naqvi-Aziz production flopped at the local box office” just like Pakistan’s efforts to improve social services miserably failed at the hands of district administration towards the end of Social Action Program.
• As regards your point about intelligentsia and media supporting the launch and implementation of local democracy, why shouldn’t they support something that is good in principle? Let the elected government bring out a system that is in line with the democratic principles of local governance (representation and accountability) and you will see a lot of support for it as well.
• We certainly are an unfortunate polity as we will now pay for the half-baked, un-representative and certainly unaccountable bureaucracy put in-charge as administrators. We never learn, do we?
• If NRB was arrogant, is Punjab government being any different in introducing the changes and “reform”? Reform is a long term process but the process itself should be open, transparent and consultative. It should, at no point, loose sight of the objectives and basic principles like representation and accountability.