Published in The News International on February 27, 2010:

The International Crisis Group’s Report on Civil Service Reform has sparked conversations around the need and potential avenues for restructuring Pakistan’s civil service. This, however, is not the first time that a report on the subject has been made public. Ever since the country’s creation, more than thirty commissions/committees have been constituted and convened to frame normative guidance relevant to this area. A detailed account of past efforts has been summarised in the report of the National Commission for Government Reform (NCGR), the most recent of these initiatives, which was tasked with the responsibility of developing recommendations to reform the executive branch of the state. The report states that previous recommendations have “been neglected, were partially implemented or distorted beyond recognition”.

The denotation of civil service reform in the reform jargon is not an isolated or a defined restructuring measure, but a set of locally-suited interventions centered on restructuring laws, codes of conduct, remuneration norms, institutional devices, and policy frameworks. Given this diversity, priorities for action and a plan for phasing reforms are important. In order to do that, the key problems with Pakistan’s civil service must be appreciated as a starting point. Broadly, these fall into three categories.

First, is the ‘colonial-contemporary lag’. Pakistan’s civil service has been modelled on the colonial system, where the bureaucracy was geared towards command and control. In the district-divisional system, a single person was empowered to collect revenue, dispense justice, exercise administrative control, assume responsibility for delivering services, and allocate land rights—in other words, absolute control. Comparable prerogatives existed at the secretariat/divisional and departmental levels. This model served the purpose of keeping citizens sub-ordinate. The realities of the state are very different today. The government must not ‘rule’ but ‘govern’ in a democratic system; it must reconfigure its capacity to harness the resources of the economy towards the goals of development and learn to engage with the private sector in areas which were previously thought to be in the ‘public domain’. Although successive governments have attempted to make some changes to be responsive to these realities, those measures haven’t borne fruit. The local government system, which was meant to be a departure from the post-colonial style of administration, wasn’t able to deliver on its premise — its current restructuring also offers little hope for reform. Frameworks for public-private partnerships, despite being in existence, have not been functioning because of institutional wrangling. And as for institutional performance, it is ironic that the most important organisation in the country — the government — upon which the functioning of almost everything else hinges, has not learnt from contemporary organisational management and business processes, and remains aligned on antiquated paradigms of ruling, which put the state at a disadvantage with respect to domestic realities and meaningful global existence.

The second problem relates to limited understanding of human resource management. In the public sector, human resource management is generally considered as being synonymous with the creation of posts, placement of staff, and disciplinary action, and is, as such, often used as a lever of power. Human resource management usually does not appear to be a priority and the capacity to plan in this area often does not exist within ministries. The environment is additionally not conducive to fostering improvements in performance. The system does not reward high performers, in general. Rules and regulations governing administrative and financial prerogatives are overtly cumbersome and tend to centralise decision-making. This is particularly relevant to operational decision-making, in relation to domains where strategic decisions have already been made at a higher level. A case in point is the re-seeking of permission for activities stipulated under approved PC 1s, which accounts for unnecessary delays and ingrains inefficiency.

The third problem and one which compounds the other two relates to the space that exists for institutionalised manipulation. Over the last several decades, numerous changes have been made in the structure of civil service in the guise of ‘reforms’. Some, as stated in the International Crisis Group’s report, have “weakened the constitutionally guaranteed protection of employment that had previously shielded the bureaucracy against political interference”. Other ‘reforms’ were aimed at ideologically reorienting the bureaucracy, entrenching military’s presence in the bureaucracy, whilst still others eroded neutrality at all levels of the administration. By-and-large, administrative restructuring was used as a tool by many rulers for personal gains and political patronage in order to consolidate their bases. Over the years, therefore, a culture emerged where civil servants were patronised and promoted, not on merit but on perceived loyalty to their respective unnamed political affiliations. Civil servants have responded to this in many ways. Whilst a majority resents this trend and still tries to operate honestly in a politicised environment, others feel unprotected due to the fear of undue accountability and choose to defer decisions whilst still others — and a growing number — tend to please their superiors rather than being responsive to citizens’ needs. In doing the latter, they become party to politically expedient decisions that have limited grounding in evidence. These institutional behaviours promote a culture where a range of ethical, intellectual, procedural, and financial forms of malpractices are becoming pervasive in the system.

As a result of all these factors, Pakistan’s system of civil service — which has yet to conform to contemporary realities after 63 years of the country’s existence — has fallen prey to exploitation, both from within its ranks as well as from outside as a result of collusive behaviour of non-bona fide entities within the political system and the private sector. And hence malpractices and inefficiencies are getting institutionalised. Poor management and lack of accountability exacerbate malpractices, whereas on the other hand, there may be a disincentive for administrators to strengthen management and mainstream mechanisms that compel accountability. Both these factors complement each other in a vicious cycle.

Civil service reform, therefore, cannot be achieved through isolated technocratic solutions; the latter can only be useful if the broader political determinants are conducive.

Measures to reform the civil service are further deeply interlinked with the collective organisational structure, procedures, protocols, and sets of regulations to manage government’s activity — in other words the prevailing system of bureaucracy. There are many unresolved questions of relevance to Pakistan in this space that need to be addressed: the relationship of the federal, provincial and district governments, the question of provincial autonomy, the fate of the many parastatal agencies, which cause the fiscal system to hemorrhage; the institutional relationships with respect to policy making, regulation and implementation; the structure of pre-service, in-service and ongoing training and capacity building; the government’s supporting infrastructure, such as e-governance, and so on.

Reform of civil service, implicit within which is a set of measures to restructure recruitment, retention, training, career progression, capacity building, remuneration, and accountability frameworks, therefore, cannot be taken in isolation and needs to be framed in the context of this entire structure, which determines how a government functions. The feasibility of these changes additionally has to be locally determined, as there isn’t a cookie-cutter multilateral framework that can make reforms work in any setting. Rather than reinventing the wheel at the cost of the taxpayers’ money, it appears most logical to use the recommendations of the NCGR to develop a multi-partisan consensus on the way forward, and analyse the resource implications of an agreed plan, based on which a phased approach can be adopted.

Pending long-term solutions, the single most important measure is to let merit and performance take over. There are many champions within Pakistan’s bureaucracy whose potential can be harnessed through this approach.

The writer is the founding president of the NGO think tank, Heartfile. Email: sania@ heartfile.org

Published in The News International on February 20, 2010:

The potential standoff between government and judiciary has finally been averted. Process-related concerns notwithstanding, the saga’s culmination appears to be a product of sound technical advice, heed to provisions of the constitution and a process of consultation. These attributes of governance will surely pay dividends whenever they are mainstreamed in decision-making in matters of state.

There is a lesson to be learnt here. But as always, reflections are becoming centered on conspiracy theories, power struggles, personal rivalries and institutional divides–in other words, power politics. By contrast some systemic considerations related to the implications of the averted standoff for state governance and its determinants have not featured prominently in discussions. This comment aims to underscore the importance of these factors.

The matter was centered on prerogatives of institutions, which brings to the fore the question of ’separation of powers’. The purpose of separation of powers is to foster institutional checks and balances, as it is only through these that safeguards can be built against potential abuse of power. Failure to institutionalise these simply creates opportunities for tyranny–whether it is in the shape of traditional dictatorship–military rule–or absolutism in the guise of democratic rule.

There are many examples over the course of the last 63 years where the authority of decision-making has been in the hands of one person in Pakistan, both during military and civilian reigns. In these situations, power has been deliberately and/or inadvertently abused and the legitimacy and sustainability of power grabbed by the executive could not be hindered, as a result of lack of separation of powers. This trend continued to prevail because powers have traditionally been ‘fused’ and the checks and balances, which could act as safeguards against abuse of power could not be asserted and in many cases, stood blurred.

We need to understand why this has been the case in the past, why this pattern appears to be changing now and where the impediments to change stand. Understanding the concept of separation of powers in Pakistan’s context is important in this regard.

In Pakistan as in any other constitutional democracy, the powers of the government are meant to be divided so that the legislature makes laws, the executive authority carries them out and the judiciary operates independently. In any constitutional democracy, a system of checks and balances is inherently implicit, and that is why powers are meant to be separated.

The judiciary is meant to exercise checks on the parliament. The power of judges to review public laws and declare them in violation of the nation’s constitution serves as a fundamental check on any potential abuse of power by the government. The constitution has a supreme status, which means that any law that violates the constitution or conducts that conflict with it can be challenged and struck down by courts. This prerogative of the judiciary has not been widely exercised in the past. However, with increasing trend towards judicial activism, the judiciary has increasingly made use of this privilege. So in its ruling on the legal validity of the National Reconciliation Ordinance (NRO) and terming it void ab initio for being ultra vires of the constitution, the judiciary exercised a fundamental check. Striking down the recent notifications as being in violation of the constitution is also a check on the executive’s authority and must be perceived in the same spirit.

The judiciary can also exercise similar checks on the executive. However, some of the recent ‘checks’–e.g. the suo moto actions with regard to setting sugar prices–are controversial, as there are many economic considerations determining price increase. Shortcomings in governance, though a proximate cause, are not a violation of the constitution, per se.

This aspect notwithstanding, the recent trend towards independence of the judiciary is a positive trend and one that holds promise of impact with regard to institutionalising checks and balances, provided ‘impendence’ does not transcend into ‘judicial imperialism’, as an expert has recently emphasized. Additionally, in order to fully realise its impact in a sustainable manner, two things must be ensured. One, de-politicising the superior judiciary and two, elimination of graft at all levels through reform of the judicial system.

The other system of checks and balances relates to the check of the legislature on the executive. There are two complicating factors in this regard–one generic to Pakistan and the other inherent to parliamentary forms of government, in general. Each of these creates a separate imperative for systemically ingraining checks and balances in Pakistan’s context.

Firstly, the power of the executive has been vested either in the president or the prime minister at different times in Pakistan. The 1973 Constitution and the 13th and 14th Amendments greatly empowered the prime minister whereas the 8th and 17th Amendments shifted power to the president’s office. Striking the right balance has therefore been a major bone of contention. Having a presidential chief executive in a parliamentary system creates a level of complexity and undermines the ability of the legislators to exercise checks on the executive. The solution to this lies in fashioning structural provisions of the constitution to separate powers.

Secondly, the other complicating factor with regard to separation of powers is inherent to the differences between presidential and parliamentary forms of government, which are the two ways in which executive authority is organised in constitutional democracies. Separation of powers, also known as trias politica, a model for governance in democratic states, is a feature inherent to the presidential system whereas ‘fusion of powers’ is characteristic of parliamentary systems. In the latter, the executive which consists of the prime minister and the cabinet are drawn from the legislature. Given this fusion, the role of an independent judiciary becomes all the more important in a parliamentary system.

The solutions to the lack of parliamentary oversight on the functioning of the government are not confined to amending the constitution. Overall systems of accountability need to be revamped to ensure that institutional instruments and arrangements are in place to enable direct and indirect political, administrative and financial accountability–both ways, involving the legislators and the executive. In doing so decision makers must scope beyond the current narrow ambit of accountability, as is being envisioned in the Accountability Bill. In order to ingrain appropriate checks and balances, many relevant institutions and instruments need to be restructured to address administrative dysfunction, mismanagement and political manipulation–all of which are pervasive in the system.

In sum therefore, two key instruments need to be reshaped in order to institutionalise a system of checks and balances between the three pillars of the state; one, the Constitution and two, a holistic accountability framework. The potential within these norms–if appropriately cascaded into implementation–to shape the destiny of this country must not be underestimated.
The writer is founder-president of the NGO think tank, Heartfile. Email: sania @hartfile.org

Published in The News International on February 13, 2010:

Members of the forum of Friends of Democratic Pakistan (FoDP) have been convened for the fourth time since the announcement, which led to the creation of the forum in September 2008 on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly. Whilst the initial meetings in New York, Tokyo and Istanbul were framed in the traditional mode with bilateral and multilateral development agencies and countries dominating, the fourth has taken a slight deviation from what is the norm in diplomatic-development-engagement in Pakistan’s history to also focus on public-private partnerships. This was evident in the theme of the fourth conference, which was hosted by the Government of UAE and was convened by Pakistan’s foreign office on January 26 in Dubai.

The relationships that determine the structure of FoPD and its diplomatic connotations are somewhat tenuous. The rate at which pledges have realized are a further bone of contention.  These limitations notwithstanding, FoDP can be a useful forum if friends’ support is strategically harnessed.

Through this comment I would like to flag a taxonomy of opportunities that could be explored through this arrangement. Essentially, there are three areas of engagement within the FoPD’s remit. For each, there are a different set of stakeholders, relevant institutional points of interface, a set of objectives that can be relevant for persual and imperatives with regard to what the government needs to do. Given this diverse landscape, there are often overlaps. It is important to bring clarity to the dynamics within each space.

The first is the traditional space of bilateral and multilateral assistance. Here, donors usually want to contribute towards achieving specific targets or outcomes. The government on the other hand, would rather have aid ‘on-budget’ to ease its fiscal constraints. However, the pledges so far, under the rubric of FoDP have not been fulfilled and the word has it that donors are skeptical about transparency within the government system, and are hence, holding back from disbursing or allocating monies. The challenge for the government within this space of engagement would be to signal confidence by demonstrating transparent use of resources and clearly laying out areas for which resources would be utilized. In this regard, the government can offer third party-audits of projects developed through funds from FODP countries. Line ministries, the Planning Commission and the Economic Affairs Division can work together to outline areas, develop feasibilities and maximize mobilization of resources through existing and new windows, with particular attention to debt swaps, amongst other instruments. However, the overarching objective should be to channel assistance to help strengthen domestic systems and mechanisms with a view to ultimately transition away from support.

The second point of interface is with the investor. Theoretically speaking, a diplomatic effort can help bring investments into Pakistan. On the one hand, there are many odds against investments given the overall law and order and security situation. However, by far the greatest enemy of investments is uncertainty of policy, and gaps in mechanisms to facilitate incoming investments. Lack of efficient mechanisms to dispense justice are a further complicating factor—debacles such as a recent real estate crisis in Karachi do very little to inspire confidence in that respect. If Pakistan wants to use the governments on the FoDP forum to access their business communities, and present the country as a destination for investments, then it will have to make the environment facilitative for businesses to operate. Here we need to be mindful of the fact that there are competing areas in our geographic neighborhood, where economies of scale, one-window operations and better governance are far more appealing to the investor. Improving governance is key to catalyzing investments—donors can also provide assistance within this space by supporting public sector reforms. However, in addition, there is also the need for mobilizing other stakeholders. Beyond the Board of Investment, honorary Consul Generals, bilateral business forums, and currently operating business and trading communities are important in this regard.

Public-private partnerships (PPP) present the third point of engagement. In addition to public-private resonance, an ideal PPP should present an opportunity for investment whilst at the same time have a public good character through protecting public interest. These arrangements can be defined as ‘cooperative ventures, or risk sharing relationship between the public and private sectors, built upon the expertise of each partner that best meets clearly defined public needs through the appropriate allocation of resources, risks and rewards’. Through this approach, a number of diverse interface arrangements can be created. On the one hand, private money can be used to undertake projects normally in the realm of the public sector, or public money can be used to undertake projects with management expertise of the private sector, on the other. In between there are many hybrid models that combine a bit of both. In fact, in some public-private ventures, the contribution of the government can be in the form of real estate, tax and regulatory incentives, permissions, licenses or subsidized debt. The latest PPP Policy which has been recently approved by ECC provides the over-all framework for all these arrangements.
Public-private partnership was the theme of the Dubai conference. There is indeed significant potential within these models to contribute towards meeting infrastructure needs of the country, but that potential has not been tapped, despite the existence of an institutional backbone that could have played an enabling role, if it was empowered.

There is need for massive investment in infrastructure in Pakistan. According to the Asian Development Bank, the government needs US$ 13 billion annually over the next 5 years in order to meet its infrastructure requirements and be able to generate and sustain a desired growth rate. The government’s spending on infrastructure is nowhere close to this—Rs. 646 billion for the current fiscal year—and will be further compromised with the impending 40% cuts in the Public Sector Development Program. Pakistan, therefore, has no option but to resort to the PPP route. According to the Infrastructure Project Development Facility (IPDF)—a company established by the Ministry of Finance—the existing PPP opportunities in infrastructure in Pakistan amount to around US$ 2 billion. These exist in various sectors: mass transit, communications, highways, railways, ports, logistics, and social sector infrastructure. Additional opportunities also exist in power and energy sectors.

Whilst PPPs are an attractive route to attract investments, it must be recognized that these are complex arrangements. On the one hand, these entail a transformational change in the manner in which the government envisages undertaking infrastructure projects; this has implications for human resource capacity and changes in institutional norms, in general. On the other hand, it entails a specific role for several government agencies.
The Planning Commission needs to have the capacity and the mandate to define projects, which should be taken through the PPP route. For the transaction structuring phase, the role of IPDF becomes important. In addition a PPP law needs to be enacted and windows for viability gap funding need to be initialized. It is only once these gaps are bridged that the FoDP form can be helpful in identifying potential partners and contributing towards project development.

In sum, therefore, there are three points of engagement with stakeholders within the space of the FoDP’s remit, where objectives, stakeholders and institutional points of interface need to be clearly defined. Most importantly, beyond these areas, the Forum must be capitalized to secure better market access and debt forgiveness. These can have a more pronounced and sustained impact on development compared with traditional modes of assistance.

The author is the founding President of the NGO thinktank, Heartfile. E mail: sania@heartfile.org

Published in The News International on February 06, 2010:

The poor man is under tremendous stress as a result of numerous economic hardships including high unemployment, inflation, scarcity of essential commodities, and limited ability of the state to target welfare services. These hardships often prompt those who hold welfare of a common man close to their heart to question the relevance of issues that dominate current national debates — for example, constitutional amendments, the Supreme Court’s judgment on the NRO, power relationships between the pillars of the state, the accountability bill and issues of internal sovereignty — in relation to alleviating the sufferings of a common man. One particular email received subsequent to the publication of my January 5 article in these columns raises the same point. The sender raised a question and I quote: “Do you think Fazal Chacha who, along with his wife and three children is dying of water-borne diseases, is really worried about or concerned about sovereignty or the Constitution?” It is in response to such notions that I want to elaborate on the implications of restructuring state functioning at the broader strategic level for the life of a poor man.

We often think of alleviating poverty by meeting individual needs. The importance of this approach should not be underestimated. Food, clean water, security and shelter are the literal requirements for human survival and must be provided, where needed. However, it must be appreciated that the levers that determine their delivery are oiled by the effectiveness of overall governance, which is where broader strategic measures assume importance.
The compassionate approach to poverty alleviation, which focuses on the basis of giving — money more than time and skill — and which gets organised as philanthropy and Zakat is important in its own right. But compassion alone doesn’t help the poor man in the long run. Beyond giving, structural approaches to poverty alleviation are also important. These include sustainable government subsidies, income support programmes, safety nets, service delivery solutions by localised NGOs, vocational training, skill enhancement, labour market interventions, gender empowerment programmes, microfinance, other forms of access to financial services to support local entrepreneurship and augmenting domestic development resources with aid. These form part of the sustainable development approach and can be helpful in alleviating poverty by equipping and empowering individuals and communities to meet their own needs. However, even these do not reduce poverty. Beyond these, there is the need for sustained robust growth and for an honest redistributive hand of the government to ensure that the benefits of growth and development accrue to populations equitably.

Lessons from around the developing world show that massive poverty reduction and quantum changes in the lives of the poor is the result of overall robust and sustained economic growth through increases in capital — physical, human, and technological. Such a transformation is dependent on sound, consistent and effective policies, good governance, availability of financial services and an overall environment where peace, security, law and order and justice attract investments.

In such settings, the trickle-down of economic development becomes possible and benefits start accruing to the poor when economic freedoms, such as land rights and access to financial services are extended to the poor and when an honest hand of the government, fosters competitiveness and impartial oversight as a counter against organised vested interests at various levels.

The remedy to the poor man’s woes therefore does not lie just in compassionate solutions or isolated measures aimed at sustainable development and poverty eradication but in deploying these solutions in an overall context, where growth can be sustained. It is in setting this context that the construct of many parameters, which dominate national debates today assume importance.

Elaborating on the values of our Constitution as part of the post-NRO debates and structuring mechanisms to separate powers and ingrain constitutional checks and balances at the institutional level — an attempt at which is being made in deliberating on the construct of the 18th Amendment to the Constitution — assume great importance in this respect. If Constitutional stipulations could ensure appropriate power relationship between key decision makers in the past, if institutional checks and balances had been functioning, if there had been adherence to democratic principles of consensus-building, openness and transparency in decision-making, the complex geo-political conundrum with ethnic strife, multi-dimensional terrorism, organised crime and cult and mafia activity, as its key features would not be a threat to internal sovereignty today and we would not be paying the price of foreign policy decisions, made over successive decades. These threats to internal sovereignty, the uniqueness of law and order breakdown in the country, erosion of the institutional fabric with inefficient institutions as an outcome, and political instability are discouraging investments with dire consequences for the economy, as a result of which the poor man faces economic hardships.

Debates around the accountability law are critical. Lack of an institutional framework to compel accountability in the sphere of governance means that successive governments cannot be held responsible for failing to ensure economic security; for the inattention to ensuring water and energy security and for lack of investments in infrastructure critical for national development. In terms of economic progress, therefore, Pakistan lags behind its Asian peers as a result of which there are limited economic opportunities for the poor man.

The country’s mammoth debt burden has crowded out the space for development and the energy crisis is, and will continue to impact the life of the poor man in many ways. A range of decision makers and public functionaries are responsible for this but since there are no mechanisms to compel accountability, no one can be held responsible. Worst still, there are no guarantees that such behaviours and decision-making patterns will not continue to prevail — the present accountability law, even if its current weaknesses are addressed, has a strictly anti-corruption remit and does not cater to accountability at the broader governance level. Similarly, governance constraints, which have emerged overtime cannot check collusive behavior and have contributed to furthering state capture by the elite. The dire consequences of this vicious cycle affect the life of a common man in many ways. Elite capture, which can manifest as nepotism in hiring hurts a poor man when he gets sidelined from the job he may have otherwise qualified for, on merit. Elite capture of parliament affects the pattern of taxation, so whilst the agriculture sector and stock market remain outside the tax net, the common man bears the brunt by paying regressive indirect taxes. Similarly, cartelisation has recently exacerbated the sugar and wheat crises so the poor man suffers and spends hours in a queue with his daily wages being the opportunity cost. The opportunities for exploitation will not remain restricted to any specific sector if the current trends in governance and accountability prevail, but will, unfortunately, become pervasive across all segments of the economy. These are dangerous symptoms that will raise fundamental questions about the relevance of the state for a common man and can lead to widespread discontent, chaos and anarchy, which can be beyond the control of any government or political party to mitigate.

In sum, therefore, the life of a poor man will not improve and we will not be able to lift our masses from pervasive poverty until the broader structural state rubric, constitutional checks and balances, and a robust accountability framework are firmly put into place. These are founding blocks for a sound system of governance which is critical for growth, development, and welfare, all of which directly affect the life of a common man.

The writer is founding-president of the NGO think-tank, Heartfile. Email: sania@ heartfile.org