Another crisis was waiting to happen because the star-crossed heartland of Pakistan is not done paying for the agendas of its political elite. For months, the rise and fall and resurgence of a teetering regime and the ensuing great deal of delays and utter bedlam cast a looming shadow over provincial management. With business ground to a halt and the political elite interested in nothing but a chaotic round of musical chairs, the administrative wing has now decided to dabble in the destruction games. It has been three weeks since the chief secretary got up and left on “protest leave,” but neither the federal nor Punjab government has been able to come up with an alternative arrangement. The victim, as usual, in this unsettling order, is a 120-million-strong population who is yet to receive urgent, undivided attention to the precarious financial situation and back-breaking inflation numbers. No resolution to their woes is in sight, while a phenomenal majority struggles to put bread on the table every single day. To our greatest misfortune, the need to prioritise economic stability has to be spelt out letter by letter to even veteran hands that remain overwhelmed with watering political fires. More pressingly, a long, long string of reservations frequently aired by Kamran Ali Afzal regarding the “out-of-merit” transfers and postings requested from the CM House has been reduced to an afterthought. In an ideal world, such sensational accusations of tampering with the administrative skeleton would have resulted in a line of difficult questioning for Mr Elahi and Co. But in a country, as infatuated with who slandered whom as ours, the general affairs seldom make the buzzworthy cut. What Mr Afzal has stated in an official letter–raising hands–up in the air–gives a whiff of an authoritarian regime, which can well step into the muddy waters of nepotism. The honourable chief minister should not have wasted any time before ordering a high-profile investigation into its contents and presented foolproof reasoning behind his orders. Any delay in doing so would not only be detrimental to his own reputation, but also cause irreparable damage to an already dwindling trust in his government. *