Revival of magistracy system need of the hour

Thursday, August 26, 2010

Shakeel Anjum
Islamabad
The gruesome murder of two brothers at the hand of a mob has brought forth another
truth in its stark reality too and that is the need of revival of magistracy.
The institution had been introduced by the British rulers as a check on the unbridled
power of police and as a shield to protect general public from its excesses. Police could
not enter any premises, nor could it arrest any person, without the prior sanction of
relevant magistrate. Similarly, police could not use force on its own while dealing with
protests, demonstrations and other events of the sort and rather had to seek permission
from the magistrate who was supposed to be present on all such occasions.
And finally, ilaqa magistrate could be approached by the general public in case of any
grievance against police who would then inquire into the matter and take necessary
measures.
The magistrates in fact used to represent the writ of the state. They would be seen
moving all around and keeping a check on encroachments, food adulteration, illegal
hoarding, price escalation and more. In times of law and order situations, national
emergencies and natural calamities, they had the requisite power and status needed to
coordinate amongst various stake holders and assemble all the local resources to have
maximum impact.
The institution drew its strength from laws, rules, traditions and history. However, with
a single stroke of pen, Pervez Musharraf abolished the institution. Many different
arrangements were tried afterwards but none of them worked. The writ of the state
could never be restored to its former position.
Police was biggest beneficiary of the abolition of the institution of magistracy. They
were freed from any effective system of check and balance and the general public was
left directly on its mercy.
Innumerable incidents of police high-handedness can be quoted in the wake of abolition
of magistracy amongst which the barbaric murder of the two brothers in Sialkot is the
most recent as well as the most prominent. Had magistrates still been there, the ilaqa
magistrate would have arrived at the place of incident as it was one of their premier
duties to reach wherever public gathered and take control of the situation. In times of
public rage, people still listened to him and had confidence in his words as they
identified him as one amongst themselves and dissociated from the police. Mob
handling through stick and carrot was their specialty which they used to perfect through
experience and practice.
In Sialkot-like situation, a magistrate would have negotiated with the mob and
convinced them to give law a chance to take its course. He would have ordered use of
force by police too if the mob had not paid heed to his request. Still he might not have
succeeded but at least he would have tried to save the boys — an element which was
totally missing in the recent incident. Today a chief minister has to come into play to
take the district police chief to task; yesterday, in the system originally introduced by
the British, even his ACR was written by the district magistrate.
Similarly, in the flood-hit areas too, the magistrates would have been quite useful. They
would have coordinated amongst all the relevant departments to carry out relief work as
no other department enjoys so much of local influence today which was once enjoyed
by the magistrates on account of their legal powers and traditional role. The
government has tried to fill the lacuna through ad-hoc measures but no person or
institution has been able to take the place of erstwhile magistrates.
This does not mean that the magistrates were panacea of all ills. There is no denying the
fact that over the time, weaknesses had crept into the system and working of
magistrates had deteriorated in many ways. There are others who label the institution as
the relic of the British Raj but if magistracy was their legacy then so was army,
judiciary and many other institutions.
Magistracy was in fact a useful institution which the British had introduced in view of
the local circumstances and nothing justified its abolition. At best, reforms could have
been introduced in the system in order to bring it in tune with the modern day realities.
It was generally believed that one of the first things the new government would do in
the wake of departure of Musharraf would be revival of the magistracy. However,
improvement in governance at lowest level does not seem to be anyone’s priority. Even
the chief minister of Punjab, who is respected by many for his hard work and
efficiency, has not been able to attend to such an important matter. The fact is that the
institution of magistracy would have to be revived sooner or later — if not by this
government then by any subsequent one. If so, then why not sooner rather than later?

Commissionerate system on the anvil

Friday, June 27, 2008

By Salis bin Perwaiz

Karachi

The revival of the Commissioner system is in its final stage and it is expected that the
system may be reintroduced within a couple of months throughout the country except
Islamabad where the said system already prevails successfully, a source informed.

Sources said that high level meetings were going on in Islamabad in order to revive the
Commissioner system in the whole country as crime situations were worsening with time.

The reason for the authority’s emphasis on this system lies in the fact that even after the
promulgation of the Police Order 2002 crime could not be effectively controlled, which
resulted in the decreased morale of the police.
Sources added that the government was also considering legally empowering deputy
commissioners with the magisterial powers of the district magistrate – a power which
they enjoyed before the introduction of the 2002 order. Hence the issue of key import is
the powers of the district magistrate without which the system will not be able to work
successfully.

According to a legal expert, the powers of the district magistrate were curtailed as an
exercise in the separation of powers of the executive and the judiciary and hence cannot
be given to the deputy commissioner. However, with an Act of Parliament, he can be
given limited magisterial powers to maintain the law and order situation in the district
such as imposing Section 144 of the Criminal Procedure Code (Cr PC) which are being
enjoyed by the District Police Officers (DPO) as well as the Nazims of the districts.

Besides that, as under the Police Order 2002, Nazims have been given powers to maintain
the general law and order situation in the districts, which they can achieve by giving
appropriate authority to their respective DPOs. However such powers are limited; the
Nazim can not interfere in the transfer process of the postings of Station House Officers
(SHO) and other Police Officers.

The same situation prevailed previously as well where the deputy commissioner,
although fully empowered to control crime, never interfered in the internal discipline of
the Police force or the transfers of the SHOs; these were left up to the SSP to deal with.

The deputy commissioner also used to coordinate between all the other departments of
the districts besides the law and order. During emergencies and natural calamities, the
deputy commissioner would mobilise all the resources available to him and try to control
natural disasters like floods, cyclones, heavy rains etc.

The deputy commissioner also enjoyed power as the district treasury officer as well as the
head of the district Red Cross Committee, Civil defense, district armed services board,
and the relief committees. The commissioner was the coordinator as well as the
administrator the division. He would work along his counterpart – the deputy inspector
general of Police – and used to exercise full control over the law and order situation as
well as the crime in the division.

Under the Commissionerate system, Karachi was divided into five districts – South,
West, East, Malir and Central – each of which were assigned a deputy. Karachi was then
further divided into sub divisions being supervised by the Sub-Divisional Magistrate
(SDM) who worked alongside the Assistant Superintendent of the Police (ASP) or the
Deputy Superintendent of the Police (DSP) and the system worked smoothly in the city.

The head commissioner of the city was Commissioner Karachi who was responsible to
the Chief Secretary and the Home Secretary as far as the law and order was concerned.
Likewise, the rest of the Sindh was also divided on the same pattern – one commissioner
in Hyderabad, and another at Larkana and Sukkur. It may be noted here that the Larkana
division was upgraded into a separate division under the tenure of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto,
the then Prime Minister of Pakistan, and the first commissioner of Larkana was Khalid
Kharal while (the late) Pinjal Khan was its DIG.
 Sources say that it is the need of the hour to give magisterial powers to
deputy commissioners like before, and the government should revive the old
divisions and the districts up to the sub-division while the Police Order 2002
should be withdrawn.

However Regional Police Officers should continue – one at Sukkur, another at

Hyderabad and a third at Karachi to administratively control the police force and the
DIGs working at the divisionary levels. It may be recalled that during the year 1986 the
government of Sindh appointed Riaz Ahmed Sipra as the Additional IG Sukkur while the
DIG Sukkur was working under him.

salis.perwaiz@thenews.com.pk

Source:http://www.thenews.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=120756

Collapsing local governance

Local government legislative framework needs to be finalised immediately
By Raza Rumi

Recent floods have exposed the capacity of the state to govern, especially at the
local level. The disintegration of local state is not a recent phenomenon. The
continued experimentation with and frequent strangulation of local governance
arrangements have led to a situation that Pakistan’s burgeoning population is now
without a representative, accountable local state.

Erosion of state writ: Three historical trends are noticeable for their impact on the
overall governance and the writ of the state. First, centralisation is a tendency that is
most attractive to those who govern Pakistan at the federal and provincial levels. The
post-colonial Pakistani state has retained the official obsession of controlling power
and patronage at the top and denuding the local space for democratic development
and sound mechanisms of accountability. Secondly, granting local autonomy has, by
and large, been a smokescreen for powerful military governments to bypass
provincial politics and control the levers of state and society from above. Thus, we
have an established pattern: local government experiments flourish under
authoritarian regimes and get undermined whenever democracy, a la Pakistani
variety, returns. Finally, the constant denial of a responsive state at the local level
has led to erosion of state legitimacy and the void has been filled in by mafias,
politico-criminal gangs and militant non-state actors.

While the 2001 Ordinance empowered the local governments and led to some
improvements in service delivery, the abolishment of executive magistracy led to a
complete collapse of social regulation functions of the local state. The local and
special laws that require ‘executive’ action and on-the-spot enforcement (food
adulteration, public hygiene, forests, public nuisances etc.) slid from partial
enforcement earlier to a wide-ranging non-enforcement. Data is difficult to gather in
a secretive and fragmented public sector culture but media reports have cited
numerous instances where flagrant abuse and violation of local laws and regulation
has taken place. In addition, the non-enforcement and later subversion of Police
Order 2002 further compounded issues of local governance. Partial implementation
of 2001 reforms has after a decade reached willful non-implementation without
alternative arrangements. Lack of police accountability and demolition of executive
magistracy have had grave implications.

Service delivery: The recently published Social Audit Survey 2010 revealed that over
the period 2002-2010 (during the functioning of the local government bodies), all,
considered indicators had improved (level of satisfaction had increased). These
included ‘sewerage and sanitation’ (25 percent from 12 percent), ‘water supply’ (39
percent from 18 percent), ‘health’ (33 percent from 23 percent), with marginal
increases in quantifiable ‘satisfaction’ for education and drinking water. The
replacement of the local government bodies has been criticized for a lack of empirical
evidence against their functioning, and the lost potential during the relief activities
associated with the super-flood that has hit Pakistan. However, the more worrying
aspect of this provincial conundrum is the slow pace with which a relatively
successful system that has been scrapped is being replaced. The void being created
by this sluggishness is adding to the deficient capacity of the state to provide
adequate services to the country’s population, something that has been aggravated
and brought to the fore by the ongoing crisis.

Conceptual fallacies: It is unfortunate that most analysts in Pakistan tend to focus on

the centre and the top level governance arrangements with little attention to where
the state is most relevant: in the remote villages and qasbas, in small towns and
union councils. Lack of fair mediation and negotiation of citizen interest means
traditional power structures remain intact and prosper at the expense of public
interest. Even the hyped lawyers’ movement (2007-2009) focused on apex justice
institutions and paid scant attention to issues of subordinate courts, local dispute
resolution and above all social justice. The discourse remains locked in the
conventional wisdom: fix things at the top with ‘good individuals’ and institutions will
auto-correct. This approach to institutional development is akin to the failed and
discredited trickle down theory whereby economic growth gains are somehow
supposed to reach the poor.

Old wine in new bottles: With the lapsing of temporary constitutional protection on
31st of December 2009 provided to the Local Government Ordinance 2001, the PPP-
led government abolished the National Reconstruction Bureau (which had introduced
the local government system in 2000). In this context, Punjab and Sindh are yet to
enact local government laws, while Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) have
enacted the new legislation which essentially reverses the reform achieved in 2001
and reverts to the bureaucratic led, provincialised management of local
governments. In Balochistan, the bill named “Balochistan Local Government
(Amendment) Act, 2010? has now been passed. The Act provides for deletion of the
sub-section (4) of Section 150 of Balochistan Local Government Ordinance
2001which calls for holding of local governments elections every four years. It also
empowers the provincial government to appoint administrators in districts and
towns/tehsils vice nazims and restricts it to hold local councils’ elections within a
year. Even if all the legislative frameworks are completed in the next few weeks, the
provincial governments are likely to cite floods as a logistical constraint against the
holding of local government elections.

Governance vacuum: In Sindh, PPP and MQM face a deadlock between divergent
positions, whereby the PPP wants to curtail the powers of the local governments by
enforcing the LGO system of 1979, whereas, the MQM favours the empowered local
governments in the light of the SLGO 2001. The effectiveness of local government
bodies in KP has been stalled by successive crises and parliamentary ineffectiveness.
The largest part of Pakistan, the Punjab with a population of nearly 10 crores is being
managed by district coordination officers acting as administrators in place of Nazims.
Further, the revival of the commissioner’s offices in the province has led to another
layer of bureaucracy with no provision for citizen participation. With the province and
the federation passing to and for the responsibility of holding elections in the
province, the Lahore High Court has issued a notice to the province to get its act
together and resolve all pending issues. There is a draft law which is being debated
by the provincial government, which is a hybrid of 1979 and 2001 models of local
government.

Urgent need to engage communities: In the aftermath of the floods which have
affected more than 20 million people through the destruction of crops, livestock,
infrastructure and residential facilities, it is necessary that reconstruction activities
invoke community participation. Involving the affected community in reconstruction
not only provides a direct stake to the affectees in reconstruction abilities (thereby,
adding the element of ownership to such projects), but also utilizes the resource pool
present in the community, in turn creating income-earning potential for those who
have lost almost everything in the floods. However, the lack of elected tiers of local
government will impede this process. In the immediate term, the options are limited.
Thus the role of community organisations and their networks becomes quite
significant.

Rural Support Programmes: Grassroots organisations such as Rural Support

Programmes (RSPs) are uniquely positioned to exploit their already established local
networks. Over the years, the RSPs have been able to acquire intense leverage in
rural populations through their programmes of social mobilization. Community
mobilization involves the formation of male and female community groups at the
village level, and their indigenous management of interventions aimed at
rehabilitation. Such an approach can enhance the role of target communities in
reconstruction activities of the government and other stakeholders in their respective
areas. Given the fact that the flood-affectees will be hard pressed to acquire seeds
for sowing at the prescribed time in the context of a dearth of residual resources,
such income opportunities will be more than welcome. Involvement in rural
reconstruction will also take the pressure off urban centers which promise the flood
victims little more than absorption into the already bulging informal sector of the
economy.

The provincial governments — especially Sindh and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa — face an

uphill task of restoring livelihoods and arresting discontent. More importantly, after
the 18th Amendment they have a huge responsibility to make the local state
functional not through unaccountable bureaucrats but through elected
representatives. This is vital for their credibility and legitimacy in the medium term.
Therefore, the local government legislative frameworks need to finalized immediately
and local elections should take place. In the meantime, they should ensure that the
local civil society, communities, media and other stakeholders are fully involved in
the reconstruction process. Reports on rewarding the favourites and impairing aid
flows are potentially disastrous for the future of democracy given the relentless
attacks on the political elites these days.

Finally, to curb terrorism, enforce local regulation and to improve services (including
post-flood relief and reconstruction) the local state must work. There is no other
option.
The writer is a policy expert based in Lahore

(www.razarumi.com). Email: razarumi@gmail.com

______________________________________--

Bhotani for revival of DC institution

Ghulam Tahir

Quetta—Speaker Balochistan Assembly Aslam Bhotani says Chief Minister Nawab

Muhammad Aslam Raisani, members of his cabinet and the MPAs are actively engaged
in improving the law and order situation in the province.

Talking to this scribe here Saturday Bhotani said that the incidents of target killing in the
province were unfortunate but sufficient progress had been made in reducing such
incidents. He pointed out that the murder of Nawab Akbar Bugti during Musharraf
regime was the main cause of deteriorating law and order situation which has created
hatred and despondency among the youths and militants.

He maintained that it is responsibility of the federal and provincial governments to

remove the trust deficit to improve the over all situation in the province.

Referring to NFC Award the Speaker said that it was the outstanding achievement of
Nawab Aslam Raisani ensuring financial relief for the province which was indeed a
positive step by the federal government to accelerate the development activities and
building chain of dams to store the flash flood water for irrigation of million of acres of
land laying barren for want of irrigation facilities. He observed that the NFC Award
would go a long way to put an end to the sense of deprivation and leave positive impact
on the minds of people.

Referring to the restoration of the institution of Deputy Commissioner in the province he

said” it is of paramount importance to restore this institution for improving law and order
situation.

He said the institution of Deputy Commissioner is functioning successfully in Islamabad

why provinces be deprived of the institution of Deputy Commissioner. “The post of
Deputy Commissioners should be restored without any further delay”, he said.

_____________________________________________

PESHAWAR: NWFP to revive posts of deputy commissioners

By Mohammad Ali Khan
Thursday, 26 Mar, 2009
MEDIA GALLERY
Stars at Lakhme

PESHAWAR, March 25: The NWFP government is converting the post of district
coordination officer into deputy commissioner, a step believed to help regain the ‘glory’
bureaucracy had lost in the aftermath of the devolution of power plan introduced in 2001.

A summary for converting the existing 24 posts of DCOs into deputy commissioners
(DCs) has been forwarded to Chief Minister Ameer Haider Khan Hoti, who has
principally agreed but a formal decision is expected shortly, an official told Dawn here on
Wednesday.

The NWFP was the first province to revive the seven revenue divisions abolished in 2001
when former president Pervez Musharraf introduced the devolution of power plan,
aiming at curtailing the powers of bureaucracy.

Amendments to the Land Revenue Act adopted by the NWFP Assembly at its last sitting
legalised the revival of the seven divisions, each to be headed by a commissioner.

Since the amendments also had provisions for the posts of DCs and assistant
commissioners (ACs) to deal with revenue-related issues and cases, the easy way to
materialise them was to change the nomenclature of the DCOs’ post as DCs, said the
official, adding: “The revival of posts of DC and AC will be carried out in the same
manner.”

Before the introduction of the existing local bodies system, the post of DC was the centre
of power at the local level and the DC would also act as district magistrate apart from
providing lead role to all the departments. Similarly, the DC would supervise police as
well as serve as a coordinator between district and provincial governments.

However, most of the executive powers were delegated to the elected representatives,
whereas police were virtually made an independent entity after implementation of the
new system.

Many in official circles believe that the nazims who were delegated the executive powers
once enjoyed by the bureaucracy were not trained enough to exercise their authority in a
proper manner that caused perplexity and failure of institutions.

The official said the proposed Local Government Act, 2008, which had been approved by
the provincial cabinet and submitted to the federal government, also spoke about the
revival of executive magistracy to be exercised by deputy commissioners and assistant
commissioners in the province.

The provincial government, he said, considered that it needed revival of the old system of
commissioners, deputy commissioners and assistant commissioners to deal with the
issues of lawlessness, price hike and general public complaints.