Daily Times

A column published in Dawn on July 4, written by Mr Adnan Rasool, a political science doctoral student at Georgia State University, finally explained the role of the parliament in a clear and easy to understand manner. In the Pakistani drawing room, politicians are to blame for all the ills of this country. That or the military, if you happen to be of the liberal ilk. Any defence of politicians or the military, depending upon which drawing room you are in, is blasphemy.

As myself and anyone with even a rudimentary understanding of Pakistani constitutional structure can tell you: national and provincial assembly members have no legal or constitutional way to build roads, provide electricity, build schools or generate jobs in their constituencies.

They are public representatives — legislators — who represent the will of their constituencies in the law making process. At the federal or provincial levels, they provide oversight to government functioning, allocate financial resources to different ministries — not necessarily specific projects — and legislate. They have no legal ability to provide and execute individual projects or to give jobs to anyone. It was only in the 1985 party less assembly that Ziaul Haq provided them with discretionary funds for spending, which again there is no legal or procedural way of spending, outside of requesting the executive to do the needful.

Why then, does the public ask for — and the candidates promise — the moon? The answer is simple, because under most democratic dispensations, there is no meaningful, financially viable and empowered local government.

The military regimes invariably institute functional local government typically to depoliticise the society and to provide governance. They succeed on the governance side, but fail miserably on depoliticisation. The democratic regimes associate local government with the military, but also see empowered local level governance, outside of the dharnas and pressure groups with jaundiced eyes.

The democratic regimes like patronage politics, because it allows for concentration of power in their hands with no day to day local level accountability. The executive plays a willing partner in this process as it indulges MNAs and MPAs. In exchange, it gets to retain its own power and accommodate its own corruption. Empowered local government would be the death of the colonial bureaucracy as well as the politics of patronage.

I live in Britain, where I have no idea who represents me in Parliament. All of my services that matter to me, from roads, to trash collection to social services to education are in the hands of the local government. I vote for the party in national elections, whose manifesto I like.

The executive doesn’t have the finances to deliver the services, because the elites won’t pay their taxes and the politicians won’t make them do it either

Musharraf’s local government reforms also induced many people who formerly ran for national and provincial office to run for local offices, because that’s where the power to affect local level change was rested. In the absence of that mechanism, the public wrongly thinks of the MNAs and MPAs to be responsible for everyday facilities. Hence, in the present election cycle we again find ourselves seeking accountability for the wrong things from the wrong people. Because the right people, who have the authority to provide services are in fact, constitutionally unaccountable — the bureaucracy.

The only way the national and provincial political system can deliver services directly is through corruption. And that is in fact, what it does, because the public demands it. It almost becomes a contract between gangsters. The public — especially the drawing room crowd — is loath to pay taxes that will fix up the government finances so that it can avoid going to the likes of IMF. The politicians, loath to give up their patronage politics won’t push the issue. Completely neglecting their real job, the politicians will proceed to play the roads, power stations, tree tsunamis and bus service politics. In fact, I am amazed that the state manages to deliver what it does with the meagre taxes it collects. Legislative discussions have no place in such an environment.

In Pakistan then, the system finds itself in a state of ‘corruption by popular demand. Deliver to us, what you legally cannot, but do it anyway — says the public. We will deliver to you, what we cannot legally, but we will do it anyway — say the politicians. The executive, that legally can, is not accountable.

The executive, doesn’t have the finances to deliver the services, because the elites won’t pay their taxes and the politicians won’t make them, especially mainstream contenders like the PML-N and PTI, since they represent the middle class and professional classes, respectively.

So, as they crow about their corruption while calling others corrupt, the business of legislation and who has the most progressive legislative record becomes a matter of supreme indifference, to politicians and even the most sophisticated commentators. And that’s the tragedy of Pakistan.

The writer is a researcher in Politics and Environment at the Department of Geography, King’s College, London. His research includes water resources, hazards and development geography. He also publishes and teaches critical geographies of violence and terror

Published in Daily Times, July 11^th 2018.