Devolution of Power to establish true democracy
Frontier Post
Islamabad (APP): National Reconstruction Bureau Member Mohammad Ali Khan Wednesday said that the main objective of the devolution of power was to establish the foundation of genuine democracy which is not possible without local government.
Talking to state run agency here he said “We want to establish democracy in such a fashion that the power is transferred to the people and they hold on that power forever.”
He said, the objective was to give the power to the people to get their problems resolved within the district they live in. “Once people have the power in their hands, then the foundation of genuine democracy will be established,” he said.
The foundation of genuine democracy was local government and building on that foundation were the provincial and federal governments, he said adding “our plan is in no way a negation of provincial autonomy,”
Replying to a question as to how this plan could be differentiated from the previous Basic Democracy Plan, he said, “We have 100 percent representation of women in this plan” and this was being done to create and enabling environment for the women for the present and for the future. “There is also an increase in the number of seats for peasants, under-privileged and the workers,” he explained.
Mohammad Ali Khan said that under the plan there would be several committees for education, finance, health public works etc. at the union council level. These committees will act as monitoring committees for the delivery of services within the communities. There will also be Citizen’s Community boards.
This, he said, would be a tool to make the people proactive rather than reactive to the problems. Furthermore, “we have finished the rural-urban conflict in this plan, something that has never been done before.”
Replying to a question about non-party based election he said, in the history of the country there had never been party based elections for the local government.
Secondly, he said, the notion of eliminating any, or all political parties was absolutely false. There is no politics without political parties but local government is not about politics. It is about a common man’s mundane problems.
