The trend in Pakistan has historically been that military dictators hold local body elections, while parliamentary democracies don’t. That’s because dictators need to legitimise their rule in some way, while provincial governments hate giving up their powers to local bodies. However, power unused might as well be power non-existent and the Supreme Court’s ruling in this regard is a welcome change. After six years of litigation, involving the Punjab and Sindh governments and the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP), the Court on Wednesday said it would give provincial governments eight months to enact the legislation necessary to start the local body election process. That means by November we should see an end to the litigation drama and some substantive moves towards strengthening democracy from the foundations. In a country of 180 million people, parliamentarians can hardly meet the individual needs of their millions of constituents, and neither is it their job to. They are mean to represent their constituents as legislators. This is part of the reason most MNAs can’t fulfil their campaign promises. Even provincial representatives aren’t accessible to the majority of their constituents and can’t deal with the daily problems of streets, drains and other services that citizens need resolved. We can thank the great reformer Ziaul Haq for this as well, since it was his order that moved responsibility for these matters up the political ladder, effectively crippling local government. Local bodies also serve as training grounds for future political leaders, letting them come to grips with the daily lives and problems of citizens; they are leadership schools that breed maturity in the political process and politicians. The Musharraf regime can be credited with at least trying to bring back local bodies and the nazim system, though politically flawed, created renewed interest in local government, as people saw political responses to their daily demands. The PPP government overturned this system, claiming it lacked legitimacy and that legislative changes needed to be made to make the process constitutional. However, they failed to move on legislation while re-establishing the old colonial structure of centrally appointed district commissioners in some provinces. The Pakistan Workers Party (PWP) among others moved the Supreme Court to force the issue. Wednesday’s ruling puts the power to hold elections back in the hands of the ECP, something the provincial governments argued they should have. However, the court wisely decided that this would present a conflict of interest. This final hurdle in the process now removed, the ECP and the provincial governments need to get down to the task of delimiting constituencies and holding transparent elections to devolve power as soon as possible and no later than the Supreme Court’s deadline of November. *