SDF urges govt to make core committee decisions public
By Aziz Malik
Courtesy: daily dawn
SDF demanded that the PPP govt should respect the will and announcement of the party’s assassinated leader Benazir Bhutto to reverse the decision of bifurcation of Hyderabad and Karachi into its previous position of five districts.
HYDERABAD: Sindh Democratic Forum has expressed grave concern over the news of handing over five districts of Sindh, including Karachi, Hyderabad, Mirpurkhas, Nawabshah and Sukkur to Muttahida Qaumi Movement to decide the appointment of administrators and demanded that all the decisions taken by the core committee of PPP and MQM should be made public.
The Forum expressed surprise that under so-called reconciliation, the PPP government is giving undue advantage to MQM in those areas where even MQM has no political say and following. This non-political and non-democratic approach of PPP is against the wishes of the people of Sindh, who expect that the government would observe rules of the game to appoint administrators on merit basis to ensure the accountability of outgoing local governments and ensure free and fair elections on promised timeframe.
SDF was of the view that surprisingly only MQM and PML-Q are in favour of district government system to protect their interests and, for this matter, MQM wants to appoint their favourite administrators to avoid audit and accountability. This decision would further strengthen the fiefdoms of one party, which is only Karachi and Hyderabad based. A statement mailed to Dawn here on Thursday, SDF said that local government system was introduced by Pervez Musharraf to divide and rule Sindh on the basis of ethnicity through his protégés as they, in connivance with each other, had destroyed the earlier local bodies system.
SDF said that even the appointment of administrators on the choice of coalition partners would introduce a new culture of favouritism and nepotism, which would ultimately politicise and divide bureaucracy into ‘loyal servants’ of the political parties.
It demanded that PPP government should respect the will and announcement of party’s assassinated leader Benazir Bhutto to reverse the decision of bifurcation of Hyderabad and Karachi into its previous position of five districts. All the decisions of core committee should be made public, the SDF demanded. It said that administrators should be appointed on merit having integrality to avoid further divide of system on ethnic basis.
A complete audit of all district government including Karachi and Hyderabad, which were exempted by the chief minister of Sindh under section 115(8) and Section 132 (C) of the Sindh Local Government Ordinance 2001, should be done before the next elections.
Friday, 12 Feb, 2010
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