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Let us be honest about something Pakistan’s governance discourse rarely says plainly: political parties do not want local governments to work.
This is not a failure of will or capacity. It is a deliberate choice, repeated by every party in every province across every cycle of government, regardless of ideology, coalition or electoral mandate.
Local bodies are constituted late, funded poorly, stripped of administrative authority and dissolved early. The pattern is too consistent, too cross-partisan and too durable to be accidental. It is policy by other means.
The reason is straightforward. A functioning local government is a rival power centre. It has an electoral base, a budget, a staff and a mandate to deliver services that citizens can see and touch. It can build a political constituency independent of the provincial party machine.
