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It was second last week of July 2006, when Islamabad hosted over hundred political workers from all four provinces of Pakistan. They had crowded the capital town of the country to celebrate a positive change in the political environment in at least ten districts of Pakistan. With an eleventh hour call, I too packed up my bag and went to take part in the celebrations.
I could not quite believe that workers from 12 different political parties were sitting together in a large conference hall of a local hotel. I wondered, others would also, that in a tough political environment like Pakistan’s how it was possible to gather political workers of different parties on a single platform. But it was not just for a conference that they were together; they were there for the culmination of a process of change in their respective districts, which had continued for the previous 21 months.
There was some political self-interest in the mainstream political parties sitting together on the same platform, but no one could ever think of bringing the political parties on a single stage for the development of country. Who could actually do this? Well, the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (NDI) went after such a crazy idea, which become their goal and objective.
NDI is an international NGO, working in over sixty countries of world for promotion and restoration of democracy. It supports democratic political parties in different areas. In 2004, NDI, with support from Department for International Development UK (DFID-UK), started a program to strengthen the capacity of political parties to engage in local governance. The program had two objectives: building capacity of political workers so that they could bring improvements within their party organization at local level; and secondly making them responsible, responsive and accountable to their constituencies.
At the start of the program, NDI held meetings with the district level party leadership of all parties to form a District Steering Committee (DSC) in each of the target districts. The DSC was made up of members from each political party. NDI worked with the local politicians through the DSC to encourage co-operation and organize the training events for party workers. In almost all districts this was the very first time that the political parties had gathered in a single forum to put collective efforts in the public interest. Local branches of 12 parties in 10 districts of Pakistan benefited from this effort of NDI, DFID and their local partner organizations.
The trainings focused on internal party management, organizations, skill building in outreach and arranging public event and wide understanding of local governance. Once the training events were completed the DSCs organized public forums and round table discussions on different civic issues prevalent in their respective districts to practically demonstrate the skills they have just learned. The issues that were highlighted mainly included law and order, education, health, the provision of clean drinking water and sanitation facilities. Hundreds of citizens in each district were participated in these events because it was a rare opportunity to address their authorities and political representatives on issues of concern to them. “It is really difficult for us to meet with the politicians since they are not available; but the round table discussion provided us opportunity”, a participant of a round table discussion held in district Khairpur remarked. These efforts resulted in some serious steps from authorities and district governments.
In district Mardan (NWFP), senior provincial minister attended a public forum on health issues. At the end, he agreed to provide five hundred thousand rupees for providing vaccines to the area hospital for prevention of Hepatitis. Moreover, in the same program, the District Nazim paid 2.2 million rupees from district budget for the repair and provision of quality services in the hospital.
In district Khairpur Mirs (Sindh), following the round table discussion on education, the Taluka Nazim made efforts to re-open closed schools in Taluka Khairpur. These efforts resulted in 22 out of 37 closed schools in the Taluka opening their doors again for schooling young people. Moreover, the same Nazim has initiated a project of establishing a filter plant in Khairpur district. He shared these initiatives with great pleasure during the conference.
In some of the districts, the DSCs celebrated “Hafta-e-Safae” a week of campaign to clean the streets. During this, they took out walks and went to butchers, vegetable sellers, other market places and houses to tell them about the importance of keeping their area clean.
Besides all these public efforts, the political workers took various initiatives to improve their party organization and administration at the local level. They did all this after attending two training workshops organized by NDI in collaboration with its partner organizations. During these workshops, they knew the importance of local party branches to gain more support of the masses. They were trained in organizing local party branches, running membership and election campaigns, keeping good relations with media, fund raising, ensuring women participation, developing effective messages, assessing party through a scientific analysis and organizing public forums.
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Hassan Nasir Mirbahar
Working in a Pakistani NGO; main concentration of my work is on good governance, political participation, election observation and human rights.
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