“Without questioning the utility of well-functioning multi-tiered democracies–which none of these men actually were able to successfully create–experts are quite unanimous on one thing. These local body elections were carried out to weaken existing political parties and leadership in the country.”

Agreed. However, if political parties had genuine roots at the grass roots, it wouldn’t be possible for the military to weaken them through local govts. The military rulers find local govts to their advantage rather than detriment precisely because they are fully aware of this weakness of the parties.

“Some even go to the extent of blaming these for creating systems of local political patronage the politics and patronage and privilege–that has seriously harmed democracy at the national level.”

That may be taking it too far. The politics of patronage and privilege is a function of our feudal system. Even if the army had not intervened in politics at all and even if these local bodies had never been established, we would still have this problem. The army did not create it. It simply recognized the situation and used it to its own political advantage by making alliances with feudals. It goes without saying That this in itself is a bad thing to do, especially considering how the military often (hypocritically) calls Pakistan unfit for democracy by citing the feudal system as an excuse.

You wrote:

“Why are these Generals so fond of local body elections? Do they really want to establish genuine democracy in Pakistan or do they really want to create their own cadre of “political loyals”–and in some cases, entire political parties–to provide a cover for their uniforms? This question has been asked several times.”

Indeed it has been asked a lot and rightly so. However, there are also two related and equally important questions:

1. Why is it that political parties always try to completely do away with elected local bodies?

2. Why is it that the media and civil society have not taken interest in creating a genuine 3-tier system consisting of elected govts at the federal, provincial and local levels with active participation of political parties at all levels?

At this point in time rather than lamenting on what has gone wrong I would suggest our only doctor at the moment seems Imran Khan and together we all as literate youth can help him remove these cancerous feudals and industrialists. Remember we helped him make cancer hospital, we who were children at that time helped him for the great cause and now as grown ups we can help in a far better cause.