what is the criteria on which governments should be evaluated?
In Pakistan, it seems governments are evaluated based on tangible development or social service projects they come up with. This is convenient for both public and government. People get some relief, government gets short term boost in popularity and haram khori from such projects.
What should be the criteria? Here’s what I think and my scorecard for the last three governments:
Federal government:
Law making: PPP 1st, Mush 2nd, NS 3rd
Defense policy: [although major decision maker is the military but: NS 1st, PPP 2nd, Mush 3rd]
Foreign Policy: NS 1st, PPP 2nd, Mush 3rd
Monetary and Fiscal Policy: Mush 1st (cushioned by foreign assistance and global growth during his time), NS 2nd, PPP 3rd
Strategic planning and policy [development and social services]: Mush 1nd [except for energy policy and irresponsible emphasis on banking and telecom sectors], NS 2nd, PPP 3rd
For provincial governments, the criteria should be;
"It's the economy, stupid" is a slight variation of the phrase "The economy, stupid" which James Carville had coined as a campaign strategist of Bill Clinton's successful 1992 presidential campaign against sitting president George H. W. Bush.
^ Yes, everything eventually impacts business and economy. From law and order, regulation, education to general health of citizens.
The problem is that the impact of government policies on economy is not contemporaneous. We see the results several years down the road, specially for investments on education and infrastructure. Like we are suffering now for Mush's energy policies (liberal CNG use, for example) and monetary policies (banks making tons of money during his time, making cost of doing business greater later). Global economic conditions also impact a country's economy (Zardari, for example, inherited government during global downturn).
So, we cannot use economic indicators alone to evaluate governments.
The impact of Musharraf's policy of diverting natural gas towards captive generation, fertilizer and CNG is the main reason for the power crisis we face today. Maximum of natural gas should have been directed to power generation.. An extremely bad decision and country can suffer so much for decades..
If the whole of natural gas (after supplying the domestic consumers) would have been diverted towards power generation.. today we could have 16,000 MW of electricity at Rs. 5 per unit. The viability of manufacturing sector in Pakistan would have been different.. Maximum we would have spent 2 billion dollars per year on importation of fertilizers. Approx. the same amount we spend today on importing stand by diesel generators.
That's why I said that contemporaneous economic indicators are not a good measure of a government's effectiveness.
Not always..
such a bad decision did not have an immediate significant effect.. but in the long run has practically contributed to pakistan's economic troubles more than anything else..
All Governments must be judged by it's legislative prowess, and the impact of those legislation on the current society and country's future. Parliament should be the place to pass laws, effective law making (or breaking) is the true hallmark of successful democracies. It is a height of embarrassment and a new depth of intellectual and moral bankrupacy that Pakistani government hasn't passed a single law in the Parliament in it's first year. I ask, what right do you have to use and abuse the word democracy to fool the uneducated and poor masses when you are so afraid to use its power and influence to build the character of the nation?
But to pin point couple of other points, in my view, a government should be judged by its efforts, and I mean systematic and reliable methods to bring down mass employment, poverty, illiteracy rate, general diseases and epidemic, reduction in crime, reduction in corruption, industrialisation of economy, general social and legal reforms to provide greater rights and protection to citizens. In a nutshell, in countries like Pakistan, any government that leaves a legacy of improved standard of living, aspiring working class and a strong middle class is a government worth praising. Otherwise, Pakistan never had any shortage of self serving, crooked industrialists. There is something so cohesively dangerous about the whole notion of rich getting richer, and Pakistan needs to break that cycle. Time to talk about equal distribution of resources.
Hopefully, by the end 2018, people of Pakistan will have facts, figures and personal experiences in regards to everything mentioned in the above paragraphs to make a sound choice. Time to move away from wishy washy political stability = economic progress self satisfying answers to everything. The aim should be to advocate serious and sustainable structural building of economy to create direct opportunity of mass employment. Pakistan is currently one of the countries with the biggest youth population, I'm interesting to see what efforts government makes to empower the youth.
Don't they have any expert, qualified economists in Pakistani media to offer critical reports on economy? Looks like all Pakistani newspapers are filled with freelance bloggers called editors who cannot offer anything other character assassinations and doom and gloom prophecies.