Pakistan, Jan. 25 -- Pakistan's local governments have long been treated as the orphans of its political system: acknowledged in law only to be abandoned in practice. When even senior ministers concede the obvious, it should not be filed away as yet another rhetorical flourish. On Saturday, Defence Minister Khawaja Asif lamented that local government elections, whenever held, had historically been far less controversial than national polls, but "we have continued to avoid them." He has a point.

The 18th Amendment devolved large swathes of authority from the federation to the provinces over a decade ago. However, those same provinces have largely refused to pass the baton further down, even as Article 140A of the Constitution obliges them...