Zubair Qureshi
Barely 42 days in office as Mayor of Islamabad, Pir Adil Gilani of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), on Monday, bade farewell to the staff and members of the first Metropolitan Corporation of Islamabad (MCI) that ended its legal and constitutional tenure on Feb 15, 2021 Monday.
MCI’s first Mayor Ansar Aziz also from the PML-N was elected on February 15, 2016 for five-year tenure, however, he submitted his resignation on Oct 6, 2020 in quite a surprise move. Following his resignation,, the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) announced to hold elections to fill the vacancy on Dec 28 2020.
Pir Adil Gilani who took oath of office on Jan 5, 2021 while talking to Pakistan Observer on the last day in office, said he was in office for less than 45 days but he tried his level best to serve the residents of Islamabad despite hurdles posed by the PTI government, the Capital Development Authority (CDA) and last but not the least bureaucracy.
I am hopeful and confident that in the next local government elections the PML-N based on its performance would clean sweep once again and restore Islamabad’s green character and beauty, said Pir Adil.
Meanwhile, Deputy Mayor Syed Zeshan Naqvi in a letter to the Chief Election Commission drew attention towards challenges faced by the democratically-elected and first-ever local government of Islamabad.
“Metropolitan Corporation Islamabad “has gone astray rather than collapsed in its entirety,” said the Deputy Mayor adding the failure of the system could be attributed to a variety of reasons both domestic and peripheral. This, he said, eventually dented the structure and largely prescribed the enacted laws and acts of parliament.
The five-year experiment shall serve as eye-opener for the law-makers and executives of the state, to review these grey areas, says the letter calling for stringent steps to make it rectified, expedited.
The ICT-Local Government Act 2015 in terms of its efficacy and enforcement clauses has vague clauses, perhaps being typical of the bureaucratic jugglery, the letter further says.
Absence of lucidity and confusing chain of command, hierarchy, powers and structure were the core reasons which kept the system dysfunctional and kaput, says the letter adding the very first notifications from the Additional Secretary regarding distribution of formations between CDA & MCI could not be implemented all these five years, let alone implementation of the allied clause.
In a nutshell, hide & seek ended up in failure of the entire system, which is actually a failure of state, that enormously failed in letting the law take its due course and direction, backed by the red-tapped culture and the mighty bureaucracy behind this foreplay, says Nqvi’s letter.
There is a dire need to review the structural modifications in these ICT-LGA 2015, endowing supremacy and powers to the elected individuals, giving strength to the MCI-House, for achievement of larger objectives, it said adding the role of CDA and its management had been on the top of things, for not letting this MCI dream come true, from pillar to post, which was backed by Labor Unions and employees, in parallel.
