Daily Times

What Pakistan has suffered the most in its short history of 70 years is the absence of good governance or the elite capture of governance, policy and regulation. The evaluation of the governance of the bureaucratic-military and the elected rulers from the inception of the country to this day leaves us in a despairing mood. Their rule did not meet the minimum standard of good governance if scrutinized at the touchstone of the constitutional and democratic norms. These regimes were autocratic, unresponsive, incompetent, corrupt and culpably liable for the violation of the fundamental human rights of the electorate to education, healthcare, protection of life and property, security of livelihood, rule of law and social justice. These rulers were wedded to favoritism, cronyism and unequal distribution of resources of the country within the society and among the federating units.

The convenient violation of the prescribed frameworks governing the inter-provincial affairs within the federation cost us the bigger half of the country in 1971. Our persistent failure in maintaining justice in the distribution of resources, development schemes and jobs among the federating units has gone a long way to create a sense of deprivation in the smaller provinces. The State is like an affectionate father and is supposed to be equally just with the citizens of all the provinces without any discrimination. Social welfare states around the world are governed by this simple and golden principle. The elite while enjoying all the power and pelf and unquestioned capture of the state resources, keep fueling parochial sentiments in order to hide their own loot and plunder. They have no love lost for the people as elaborated in my previous two columns.

The convenient violation of the prescribed frameworks governing the inter-provincial affairs within the federation cost us the bigger half of the country in 1971

Given the promises made by Prime Minister Imran Khan on his election trail, we did not expect him to cleanse all the muck of the misrule of long decades within a year or so and start running streams of milk and honey in the country. What everyone ardently hoped for was that he would form a small, clean, efficient, well conscious and well responsive cabinet which, following the constitutional mechanisms and judicious exercise of power as dictated by discretion, justice, meritocracy and public accountability, would set instances of good governance, dispensing with cronyism, accelerating the process of transparent accountability to tighten the noose around the plunderers of the national wealth. We are conscious of the compulsions of a coalition government in which political pulls and pushes are strong. With the multiple demands of coalition partners, good governance is yet possible if the restrictions imposed on the exercise of power by the constitutional and democratic norms are adhered to. This is found grossly wanting in the PTI rule too.

The stabilization of the economy is a long haul particularly now in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic. We have to wait years after the epidemic is over to see improved economic indicators. We fail to understand what has been the problem during the past two years in filling the vacant jobs in the federal administrative ministries; ensure fair distribution of national resources including irrigation water among the provinces? We may recall; the Railway adopted the novel system of recruitments by balloting in lower grade jobs. The superior courts rightfully declared over 800 such inductions null and void on the first hearing of the petitions against unique method. These inductions not only violated the prescribed process for recruitment in any federal department but, most importantly, reflected the mindset of the Minister to ignore merit, and the quota of the smaller provinces as determined by the Constitution of the country.

Earlier, the Bengali nationalists used to say that Pakistan was Punjab and Punjab was Pakistan to the peril of East Pakistan and the other smaller provinces. We never realized the heat of the Bengali nationalism boiling beneath the well touted political stability in the autocratic rule of Ayub Khan. The result was the deluge caused by the famous six-points of Awami League firing the Bengali nationalism that humbled every political party in the elections of 1970 and led to the tragic loss of Bengal. Ironically, we have never learnt a lesson from our historic debacles. This debacle also faded from our national horizon leaving no trace of remorse or any sense of national loss. It is tragic that we have again started hearing this murmur from Sindh and Balochistan. The people of KP are smart enough to force their will into the governmental decision making to save their rights from being trampled upon or being usurped by the greedy elite. This murmur or loud complain from the two other provinces was fueled by the audaciously unjust distribution of jobs, resources and federal development schemes among the federating units of the country in the not-too-distant past. Nevertheless, the differences between the federal authority and the opposition-led provincial administration of Sindh have become more pronounced in the PTI rule. We shall be playing with the national security if we allow them to keep festering.

According to credible reports, there are presently over 200,000 vacancies of various grades in federal departments which could have been filled on merit in a transparent manner observing the quota of the provinces. Sindh and Balochistan have their respective constitutionally mandated share of 19% and 6% in all the federal jobs and nobody in his sanity can think of depriving them of their right. No need to have a novel method in filling these vacancies by balloting like the man from the Lal Haveli. Only transparent observance of the prescribed system of recruitments can save the federal regime from another embarrassment, and deprive its detractors of a convenient mantra of misgovernance it is being charged with every day. Prime Minister Imran Khan can at least ensure this much justice for the educated young men from Sindh and Balochistan who have been watching with a sense of powerlessness the monopolization of the national and provincial resources by the corrupt elite.

The author was a member of the Foreign Service of Pakistan and he has authored two books