THE ECP has done well to refuse to allow the Punjab administration to push the local government elections to April. It should now hold its ground. Four years after the last elected councils left office, the province is still looking for reasons not to hold the polls. The reasons, though, keep changing. In August, the provincial authorities agreed to a window between Dec 15 and Jan 15. Two months later, they discovered that the months of December and January are foggy and cold, and that Ramazan would begin in February. None of this is news. Winter arrives every year, and the Ramazan calendar was not a surprise to anyone who signed off on the August consultations. LGs are the tier of the state closest to the people. They handle sanitation, water supply, street lighting, primary health and schooling, and local roads, and generally keep the town running. In functioning democracies, this is where citizens learn to hold someone accountable, and where future political leaders learn to govern. Provincial and federal parties know this, and many are uncomfortable with the fact. An elected mayor with a budget and a mandate is a rival centre of power. A commissioner or deputy commissioner who answers to the chief minister is not. So elections are delayed, laws rewritten whenever the government changes, and administrators fill the space that elected representatives should occupy.

The Constitution requires each province to set up an LG system and devolve political, administrative and financial responsibility, and authority to its elected representatives.

Holding elections is only the first step. Every provincial government, especially Punjab, has treated even that step as optional, and the ones that have held elections have often hollowed out the institutions afterwards. Councils without control over their own funds, staff or functions are decorative.

This matters more now than it did before. The debate on improving governance by creating new provinces has gathered pace, and it rests on a sound observation. Provinces are too centralised to serve their citizens from afar. A new provincial map, however, will not help. The new provinces will continue to behave like the old ones, hoarding power and funds at the top. If the aim is better governance, the more direct route is to strengthen the tier that already exists in the Constitution but has never been allowed to work.