The writer advises governments, donors and NGOs on public policy.

“To the victor belong the spoils,” said William Marcy, the US Senator from New York back during President Andrew Jackson’s administration. Pakistanis often tell Americans that their country is but a couple of decades behind Uncle Sam. But President Jackson, who passionately and brilliantly promoted a vulgar kind of patronage system that came to be known as the spoils system, won the 1828 election to become US president. The closest thing that Pakistan has had to a passionate and brilliant advocate of a vulgar kind of patronage was Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, and Bhutto’s era ended in 1979. The distance between the Jacksonian spoils system and Bhutto’s feudal patronage megastructure is not a couple of decades. It is 150 years.

Of course, Bhutto Sahib’s socialism, unionism and Islamism were all part of a cacophonous orchestra of smoke and mirrors that masked a vacuous and prolific feudal and rural enterprise — the cost of which Pakistan continues to bear today. Perhaps the most significant aspect of Bhutto, however, was not that he used many emotional and intellectual pressure points to sustain a feudal system of power in Pakistan. Instead, it was that Bhutto forever changed the narrative of Pakistani democracy. We need not like what it produces, but how in God’s name can anyone deny the people their right to be represented by whomever they choose? The long-term lesson that the Bhutto narrative should have taught Pakistanis may be depressing, but it is achingly, and searingly real. The pace and contours of reform in Pakistan cannot be controlled by donor logframes, nor can it be stimulated, or slowed down by soldiers (retired or serving). No matter how much money a donor gives, and no matter how many gold stars a soldier may have earned at Sandhurst, or Quetta, or West Point — reform will take place at its own merry pace — within the context of a still infant Pakistani spoils system.

The decentralisation issue is a classical case in point. The local government system introduced through the province’s Local Government Ordinance 2001 was a remarkable and revolutionary change of pace from how local governments worked in Pakistan till that point. It had so many redeeming features that it would be difficult to summarise them in a short op-ed. But it had one overwhelmingly flawed quality that ensured an unremarkable and long-drawn-out demise. It was an inorganic imposition upon a system of governance that has been in place through various permutations and evolutions for well over 500 years. That system of governance is underpinned by what is today called the District Management Group (DMG). The DMG, Pakistan’s elite civil service group, did not like the Local Government Ordinance 2001 and has been instrumental in engineering its collapse. The pace of the collapse has been staggeringly slow. The retarded pace of its collapse is owed entirely to the most unattractive element of decentralised local government — its potential to generate spoils.

The deal on local governments being worked out between the MQM and the PPP in Sindh is being described as a tortuous discussion between two serious and diligent groups of people armed to the teeth with evidence, data, and robust arguments about what does and does not work in the realm of decentralised local government — in both urban and rural areas. Optimists and dreamers in Pakistan and abroad might be tempted to wonder about the depth of detail that will be discussed during these negotiations. Perhaps they will deconstruct the value of having citizen entitlements, such as Citizen Community Boards, as part of the legislative package for decentralisation? Perhaps, there will finally be some attention paid to the oft-promised issue of staffing local governments with local talent, through devolved civil service cadres? Perhaps, a discussion about the need for three layers, district, town/taluka/tehsil, and Union Council will occur, and a cost-benefit analysis of adding or removing tiers will take place? Most crucially, perhaps these two pillars of Pakistani democracy — the PPP, a party that has sacrificed two generations of its leaders in pursuit of democracy, and the MQM, a party that has been demonised and rehabilitated through a most turbulent and violent history — would discuss the need to democratise local governments? At its core that would mean direct, party-based elections for mayor in Karachi and across all of the other 22 districts of the great province of Sindh.

Optimists and dreamers should prepare for utter disappointment. Hoping for any degree of seriousness on the part of the PPP and the MQM in their approach to the reform of the local governance system in Sindh is a fantasy borne of the mistaken notion that Pakistani democracy has progressed in any meaningful way beyond the feudal, tribal and rural instincts of even Pakistan’s supposedly progressive, secular, liberal and urban parties. The MQM (notwithstanding its urban credentials) and the PPP are not discussing local governments in the pursuit of discovering the most efficient, most effective, most transparent and most inclusive means of delivering essential social services. They are discussing local governments in pursuit of deepening and broadening a pool of clients, as they solidify and consolidate their roles as patrons.

In discussing the shape of local governments in Sindh, the MQM and the PPP are fighting it out for how each will be able to maximise their share of the spoils in Sindh — which is Pakistan’s most revenue rich, most economically vibrant and most globally relevant province (never mind the obsession of security analysts with NWFP, or mini Husain Haqqanis and their obsession with North-Central Punjab). The post-1999 the MQM’s remarkable appetite for sharing power in Sindh is not the product of a change in the identity matrix of Muhajirs, nor is it the product of a more evolved approach to acquiring power. Its appetite for sharing power (in Sindh, and at the centre) is predicated on the sustenance of both provincial and federal grants to Karachi, and the MQM’s near-certain hold on the Karachi vote-bank. As long as the MQM gets to run Karachi, and the Muhajir-heavy enclaves of Hyderabad (and control the spoils/grants), the MQM is happy to let any party run the federal and provincial governments.

The PPP doesn’t quite have the luxury of a guaranteed vote-bank anymore, even in rural Sindh. To shore up its status there, it needs to induct a new generation of young Sindhis into government jobs, while it stokes a self-defeating Sindhi nationalism that is essentially anti-everyone. Most recently, this job was assigned to Zulfiqar Mirza, who performed admirably as a victimised member of Pakistan’s feudal elite. Those who laugh at the histrionics of the PPP’s ‘wounded-feudal’ performances should think twice. The PPP’s histrionics have real and palpable appeal that have successfully managed to hold Sindh for over two generations. Its influence may be on the decline, but it is far, far from over. As long as the PPP gets to run Sindh, (and control the spoils), the PPP is happy to say or do anything.

Within the framework of a very specific set of political parameters, the MQM and the PPP could care less about which version of decentralised local government will deliver efficient services. How does water get to taps in cities? In villages? How do parents and teachers come together to monitor both educational budget expenditure and learning achievements? How do goths work together to oversee the building of community infrastructure like wells and drainage systems? How do CCBs become accountable for the expenditure of taxpayers’ money? Elected politicians at the individual level not only have opinions about these issues, but also the legitimacy of having to be answerable to constituents around these very kinds of issues. But elected politicians do not run the MQM or the PPP. The overarching feudal instinct of retaining, sustaining and deepening the pool of clients for patronage runs these parties. And it is that instinct which shapes, in its entirety the dialogue between the MQM and the PPP around local governance.

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