Daily Times Editorials 8th August 2026

Missing Tier

Punjab has finally found Rs12.52 billion for an election it was constitutionally required to hold more than four years ago. That is welcome. It is not, however, an achievement to be celebrated before a ballot is cast. Eleven years have passed since Punjab last voted in local government elections, and successive administrations have spent much of that period legislating, delimiting, amending and starting again.

Elections were last held in 2015, and the councils eventually assumed office in 2017, only to be dissolved prematurely by the PTI government in 2019. While the Supreme Court struck that decision down and restored them, their term expired on December 31, 2021. Under Article 140A and the Elections Act, replacements should have been elected within 120 days. That deadline passed in April 2022.

There should be no procedural alibi this time. The Election Commission says it is ready. Hearings on delimitation objections have concluded and final constituencies are due to be published soon. The provincial cabinet has now provided the money. If yet another alteration to the law or administrative map sends the process back to the beginning, the ECP’s own warning about last-minute amendments repeatedly frustrating local polls will cease to sound like bureaucratic irritation and start looking like a diagnosis of deliberate political behaviour.

The reluctance is not difficult to understand. Real devolution creates rivals. It transfers development money, administrative authority, political visibility and control over everyday services away from MPAs, ministers and provincial bureaucracies and towards mayors, chairpersons and councillors. Punjab makes this concentration particularly indefensible. According to the 2023 census, it contains nearly 128 million people–more than the population of most sovereign states. Government at that scale cannot sensibly mean that Lahore remains the effective municipal headquarters of places hundreds of kilometres away. Roads, drains, waste collection, water supply, building control, local markets and neighbourhood development cannot all wait upon provincial patronage.

To add to the challenges, Article 140A does not merely instruct provinces to hold elections. It requires them to devolve political, administrative and financial responsibility and authority. Pakistan has been much better at transferring resources from Islamabad to provincial capitals than from provincial capitals downwards.Gilgit Baltistan Guide

A recent World Bank report lamented how local governments accounted for around 10 per cent of total government expenditure in 2005, but by 2024, their share had fallen below 5 per cent. Punjab’s last formally notified Provincial Finance Commission award dates from 2016-17 and was never renewed. The Bank described local governments as fiscally dependent, institutionally unstable and effectively subordinate to provincial discretion.

That is the unfinished business of devolution.

It also places the current argument over creating new provinces in better perspective. Local government cannot settle questions of provincial identity or constitutional representation. Those are separate debates. But before redrawing the federation in the name of bringing government closer to citizens, Pakistan should at least make the tier expressly designed for that purpose work. 

The Makkah Pact

The Makkah Joint Defence Agreement does something more consequential than add another name to Pakistan’s long bespeckled list of friendly-country accords.

By declaring that an armed attack on Pakistan, Saudi Arabia or Türkiye would be treated as an attack on all three, it converts years of defence cooperation into a stated principle of collective deterrence. The operative word, however, is deterrence, which considerably matters in a region where missiles, drones, and attacks on energy infrastructure have demolished the comfortable assumption that wars could remain geographically contained. The three signatories have rightly stressed that the pact is defensive and directed against no particular state. Nor should it be forced into the lazy rhetoric about bloc politics. It might be better understood as an assertion that regional states need greater capacity to provide for their own security without abandoning their relationships with established global partners.

For Pakistan, there is a larger story here.

Pakistan has entered the arrangement after Marka-e-Haq strengthened perceptions of its conventional military credibility and, equally importantly, its capacity for escalation control. It subsequently demonstrated another form of strategic utility during the Iran-US conflict: while Pakistani forces and air-defence capabilities supported Saudi security, Islamabad was simultaneously helping diplomatic efforts to contain a much wider regional war. This combination to deter, reassure and mediate at the same time is becoming Pakistan’s most valuable strategic currency.Punjab Election Analysis

Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s public acknowledgement of Field Marshal Asim Munir’s “untiring efforts and utmost dedication” in bringing the agreement to fruition is therefore significant. Modern military diplomacy is not confined to exercises and ceremonial exchanges. At its best, professional military relationships create trust that civilian leadership can translate into durable state arrangements.

The journey to the Makkah Agreement illustrates precisely how military credibility can generate strategic confidence, which in turn produces diplomatic access,

It is also why the pact makes practical sense. Pakistan brings operational experience, trained manpower and tested military institutions. Türkiye contributes an increasingly sophisticated indigenous defence industry and considerable aerospace, naval and drone expertise. Saudi Arabia brings economic weight, strategic geography and growing determination to build a more autonomous security posture.

The trilateral framework had been under discussion for close to a year and follows decades of Pakistan-Saudi defence cooperation and increasingly substantive Pakistan-Türkiye military ties.Geographic Reference

All said and done, for the larger part of its history, Pakistan’s strategic importance was too often discussed in terms of what larger powers could provide Islamabad. That equation is finally changing. From military credibility after Marka-i-Haq to defence deployments, mediation and now Makkah, Pakistan is increasingly being approached for what it can contribute to the security of others. *