Articles Of Syed Shahid Husain

Good Governance and the Commission

Failure of governance has assumed monumental proportions and everyone has jumped into the fray to fix it. Most prominent among the do gooders are international financing agencies, which have started various projects over the country to improve governance and in the process achieving results far more depressing than the ones one would have thought possible. This government claiming to be committed to the concept has in the past seven years of its office added another bureaucratic chapter to its achievements by creating National Commission for Government Reforms. This Commission established in July 2006 was perhaps created to provide an opportunity to the last retiring governor of the State Bank of Pakistan to press into service his skills acquired in his previous experience spread over the last four decades in good governance.

The Chairman has in turn addressed the Provincial Chief Secretaries and has gone on to define two main objective of the Commission:

a) to improve the delivery of basic services to ordinary citizen and;

b) to improve the functioning of the government.

The Chairman giving a view of his vision concluded his paper by saying :

First, the Commission will develop a long-term framework and direction in which the reforms will be implemented. For this purpose, the Steering Committee should consider, debate and agree on the broad principles underpinning these reforms.

Secondly, the Commission will consider and present recommendations to the Steering Committee, headed by the President and the Prime Minister and to be attended by all the chief ministers from time to time on issues and subjects that can make an impact or difference to the functioning of the Government in selected areas in the immediate or short run.

In each of the above cases the distinctive characteristic of this Commission will be its emphasis on securing decisions from the highest policy makers at a single forum, ensuring that these decisions are implemented and monitoring the progress and results.

Whether the Commission, would achieve what in the past 59 years everyone has failed to achieve is a moot point. How much downward slide have we suffered will become apparent in the following paragraphs. Appointment of a new commission on good governance has raised hopes of people of Pakistan long since cheated of this precious commodity that some thing might yet change for the better.

The symbolic importance this regime appears to attach to the subject is manifest in the D.O letter of 14^th May 2006 the Prime Minister has written informing members of his Cabinet that Mr. Hussain has been appointed as Chairman of National Commission for Government Reforms (NCGR), � with the objective of making recommendations with respect to the size, structure, division of work and responsibilities within and across the various tiers of government and its functional units.� The D.O went on to say that the Commission �will also propose changes in the processes, procedures and rules through which government operates as well as in the policies pertaining to human recourse development including proposals for the evolution of the future civil service structure.� The Prime Minister emphatically underlined the importance of the instructions and directed his colleagues �to give firm instructions� to their ministries as well as to its attached departments and the autonomous bodies concerned to assume full ownership of this important reform agenda and to work with the commission with commitment and a clear objective of reforming existing systems and processes.� That is a handful that should keep the Commssion busy on 12 hours basis for the foreseeable future.

The Commission, the latest bureaucratic rhetoric of the regime in good governance, comprises 10 members, 6 of them fully paid. The terms and conditions of service of the Chairman, given the status of a federal minister, have been the subject of some lively discussion, although it is claimed that he has been allowed no more than routine pay and privileges available to officers appointed to MP-I. So Mr. Hussain is a hybrid of a civil servant (as far as pay packet goes) and a minister (as far as the status goes). Be that as it may the task of the commission, although very extensive and also intensive, if taken literally might prove beyond the capacity and competence of the commission, as the good governance requires consistent vigilance over a longer period of time, and should take at least 10 years of committed work to get anywhere near completion. One suspects that the commission life might be suddenly terminated as it is likely to be coterminous with its progenitor.

The first task assigned to the Commission is that of reducing the size of the government. Musharraf government, on the other hand, has beaten all previous records in enlarging the size of the government by creating some minuscule divisions corresponding to former Joint Secretary�s jurisdiction, so as to accommodate almost everyone in the ruling party in the Cabinet. That proved a boon for those civil servants who got catapulted to the highest grades. There are at least 37 Ministers, 24 Ministers of State and 6 Advisers. The physical space has literally fallen short for the army of ministers and buildings had to be hired all over the city to accommodate them. Ministers� enclave which houses them has fallen short of the requirement by at least 50%, and they have encroached upon official residences of the secretaries, initially intended for the Joint Secretaries. Can this Commission bring the number of this army down to that of a regiment?

Dr. Ishrat has made the auspicious start of the serious business of improving governance by writing an article in a leading newspaper. After eulogizing the performance of this military regime over the past seven years- in which case, the commission he heads should be superfluous-, he has posed a question, �what then is the way out of this situation?� He referred to the insufficiency of access for an ordinary citizen to basic services and the gap between the elite and the common man. He believes that the present system is working satisfactorily and no radical departure would be necessary. In his opinion it is only the anarchists who make such a demand for radical changes because they would be interested in creating chaos and instability in the country. Anarchists or miscreants, what is the difference?

Such an action will once again put us back on the path of retrogression and regress, he says. A more sensible option is to review and fix the administrative structure at the federal, provincial and local levels, revise and update the processes, rules and delegation of powers and responsibilities to the different tiers of government, automate and make transparent the way in which a common citizen can obtain various services, reorganize the civil service so that we have motivated, competent and responsive public servants. Braver words were never spoken. But how does he plan to give effect to his gradualist/minimalist agenda, one may ask?

It would be a small miracle if with all the authority the present regime has chosen to bestow on the Commission, it would still be able to bring about changes in consonance with the charter of the commission. In the ultimate analysis, good governance requires strengthening of institutions and adherence to rules. Thomas McCauley during the debate on the renewal of the East India Company�s charter in 1833 had this to say: �By good government we may educate our subjects into a capacity for better government; that, having become instructed in European Knowledge, they may, in some future age, demand European institutions. Whether such a day will ever come I know not. But never will I attempt to avert or retard it. Whenever it comes, it will be the proudest day in English history�. Poor McCauley must be turning in his grave at the plight of the institutions his forebears left us in the last century.

Simply put governance, is the rule of law. The most fundamental fountain of law is the constitution. That constitution continues to be violated with impunity day in and day out. Even today, it lies prostrate and is still held hostage to a serving Chief of Army Staff, who chooses to sit in the Presidency. Does the Commission have the power to remove the most potent threat to good governance?

The newspapers are full of harrowing tales of failure of governance. We have already earned the epithet of a failed state where we rank lower than Afghanistan. We appear to be going downhill unaided. There was a news that shook the somnolent Islamabad, when a retired Brig; was kidnapped from his house in Islamabad together with his daughter-in-law and her two teenage children. This happened at the instance of another army officer, with connections to intelligence agency that apparently have unbridled powers, used to deadly effect mostly against unfortunate civilians. The retired Brig was let off after few hours, but his daughter-in-law and her children got a taste of real life in this republic. It appears that the two teenagers were given a good beating before being let off. There was no law to protect the retired brigadier. Worse things happen to lesser people. What can the Commission do to prevent occurrence of such an event? Protection from state terrorism is one of the basic services to which the commission should endeavour to provide access.

Disappearances are another frightful phenomenon that has raised its ugly head during this regime. Hundreds of people have vanished without a trace and the High Courts are reluctant to grant relief because the unmentionable ISI is suspected to be involved. The Ministry of Defence has come up with an interesting defence that the outfit is only under its administrative control but not any operational control. So there is a state within the state quite outside the pale of law. Can this commission do something about this menace of disappearances or suggest to the government to bring the organization within the ambit of law?

Civil bureaucracy has never been so demoralized as during the past seven years. The policy of pick and choose in matter of promotions sanctified in the absence of a formal policy, in a meaningless phrase of �Best Of The Best� has put paid to any hope of having �a motivated, competent and responsive civil serice�. Since there is no such policy, this useless phrase is used with abandon by the Central Selection Board to have their pick and in the process cause mass scale demoralization amongst the civil servants, most of whom, in spite of their seniority and merit are left out. Is there anything that this Commission can do to arrest the slide and restore some confidence among the civil servants?

Then there are hundreds and hundreds of retired and serving military officers appointed to the civilian jobs not because they possess any qualification or have a clue as to the requirement for the new assignment but simply because they happen to have once worn a uniform and were plain lucky to be known to the decision makers. NEPRA, an autonomous organization which requires men of caliber having university education has been given a Chairman who is a retired general and is one of the three uniformed colleagues who once lorded it over the Ministry of Railways and were involved in a huge scandal of Rs. 5 billion for purchasing useless railway engines. The matter went up to the Public Accounts Committee (PAC), which not co-incidentally was headed by a retired Lt. Col. duly elected to the parliament; and this committee in its supreme wisdom decided to forget the loss to the exchequer, because the whole scam was on account of �good faith�. Can this commission define good faith so as to put such scams beyond the arbitrary interpretation of a Public Accounts Committee?

In yet another case, the PAC gave in to pressure and ignored the directives of the Ministry of Defence Production and Auditor General of Pakistan and refused to refer the case of 9 corrupt military officers to the NAB. It withdrew an earlier directive of taking disciplinary action against some top army officials. Officials had pocketed Rs. 12 million at various stages of the contract awarded in 1994. Not a worryingly large sum with respectable scams touching a billion mark. Rules do not permit disciplinary action against retired military officials. Can this Commission ensure that the guilty is appropriately punished even if he belongs to the military?

Then there was this purchase by Pakistan Security Printing Press without tender of a machine worth Rs.5b, which has been declared a mispurchase by the Public Procurement Regulatory Authority (PEPRA) and the case has been referred to NAB. But not much has been heard since. The rot in the state of Denmark is a legion. Could this Commission take notice of this rip off and put things right?

Administrative barriers and corruption have been identified as two main barriers to economic development, according to a published report of Foreign Investment Advisory Service (FIAS). For starting a business an investor has to devote 497 days requiring 21 registration approvals, 15 at Federal and 09 at Provincial levels. For every approval one has to face multiplicity of documentation. To fulfill the requirements for basic utilities it takes 27 days for telephone, 50 days for gas, 45 days for power and 26 days for water and sewerage connections. There exist some 16 direct taxes and many more indirect taxes. The cumbersome, lengthy and corrupt tax registration requires 12-15 documents. Tax reporting compliance requirements represent 8-20 % of management time, 52 annual filings and 336 days of work. Tax audits and collections frequent average of three inspections per year. Tax appeals system is poorly functioning and takes an average of 5 to 6 months to adjudicate cases. Chairman of the Commission seems to lay great emphasis on process, would it be possible for him to do something about it?

FIAS recommends intense legislative reforms and improvement in the laws as well as the need for introducing modern public sector management with the abolition of quota system and simplification of tax administration. Will the commission be able to bring about the desired improvement?

Ishrat�s appointment as Chairman of Good Governance Commission, as the media prefers to refer to it, is one of the few commendable acts of this government, claiming to have ushered in good governance. One is conscious of his personal assets including his formidable reputation both in competence and financial integrity and would not blame the people for nursing a hope in a bright future on account of this appointment. No wonder, some people have started harboring hope of improvement in governance.

Last but not the least, it requires much more than the procedures, processes and the pay package, men of strong character, men and women of vision prepared to scarify their personal interest for the sake of larger national interest, those that can rise above personal and clannish interest to take this country out of morass. Dr. Rajendra Prasad former President of India had this to say after the Indian constitution was passed in 1949: -

India needs today nothing more than a set of honest men who will have the interest of the country before them.

Syed Shahid Husain