Here goes democracy in Pakistan! Crooks are back and they’ve started their old tricks of looting the nation!
http://www.nation.com.pk/daily/171202/main/top5.htm
By Sarmad Bashir
LAHORE—A massive bureaucratic reshuffle is in the offing in the Punjab. The process that has already begun does not signal Chief Minister Ch Pervez Elahi’s intention of good governance but of his penchant for personal loyalty rather than professional integrity.
The abrupt transfers of the IG Punjab and some other senior officers indicate the new government’s bid to display a show of authority. If so, it is certainly not going to go well and may end up in the re-emergence of an administrative set-up like that of 1985 with the civil servants looking for political patronage than excelling professionally.
It was expected that the Ch Pervez Government learning a lesson from the past would try to move on to the path of good governance and instead of politicising the bureaucracy it may raise a result-oriented rather than a partisan administration. But perhaps the way the government is being personalised through appointment of ‘favourites’ on key positions it seems that Pervez Elahi is trying to emulate Mian Nawaz Sharif’s first tenure as the Punjab CM when bureaucrats were benefited on the basis of their being instruments of politicians than their competence.
Mian Nawaz didn’t change his disposition to favouritism and he continued to patronise his blue-eyed boys in the bureaucracy during his two tenures as CM and PM. It was only Mian Shahbaz Sharif who reversed his brother’s policy and formulated his own administrative standards through which he tried to restore good governance, delivery of services and improvement of the performance of his government. And this all had a heavy impact on the system which helped him earn a good name in elite circles as well as in the public. He would not even mind the bureaucratic reaction against him and remained committed to his merit policy.
And once Shahbaz Sharif formulated this policy he didn’t relax it, except only once in a while where he had to retain incompetent officers in their positions on the ‘special’ instructions from Brother Prime Minister. A hard task master that he was, he wanted to have an efficient and professional team rather than a crowd of ignoramuses in the administration which would keep praising their political masters to get and retain key positions. At that time bureaucrats were not rewarded or persecuted for their political affiliations; Kh Naeem was removed as Commissioner Lahore although he was related to PML-N MNA Kh Muhammad Asif and similarly another known Nawaz-Loyalist Kh Siddique Akbar couldn’t get a posting better than Director Anti-Corruption Establishment despite his proximity to the Prime Minister House.
On the other hand Mian Shahbaz picked up Malik Muhammad Akram as Finance Secretary Punjab merely on the basis of his competence and professional integrity and in total disregard of the fact that this bureaucrat was the son-in-law of former PPP Minister Ch Mumtaz Hussain. His other son-in-law Rana Naseem was appointed Secretary Agriculture only when he was promoted to grade 19. Malik Akram later having served as Chairman P&D Department is now on an assignment with the Asian Development Bank.
The fact that Shahbaz Sharif had managed to cobble together the best administrative team in the province is evidenced by the retention of these officers by the military regime over the past three years, maybe with a slight change in the previous positions of these officers. At least Governor Punjab Lt Gen (retd) Khalid Maqbool seems to have strictly followed the merit policy in the transfers and postings of civil servants without having been influenced by sifarish. Perhaps he didn’t want to involve bureaucracy in any controversy.
For instance, despite massive pressure to transfer Secretary Education Sibtain Fazle Haleem and Secretary Health Hasan Waseem Afzal, he stuck to his guns not to remove them. Then of course Governor Khalid had picked up Zahurul Haq Sheikh as Chairman Planning and Development Department only because of his competence and professionalism despite the fact that the said officers had no bureaucratic or political clout. But the former two bureaucrats are likely to go in the next round of massive administrative reshuffle.
Nevertheless with the new government firmly in the saddle the Punjab seems to be in a different mode with the civil servants having to recall an old lesson: Now on, what is to be respected is their loyalty to the political leadership more than their competence and professional integrity. “The new Chief Minister must be grossly mistaken to expect his new team with some officials of questionable integrity and adverse intelligence reports to do miracles for putting an end to lawlessness,” remarked a disgruntled bureaucrat. Ostensibly IG Asif Hayat Malik had to go because of his inability to match Ch Pervez’s commitment to improving the law and order situation while expecting the likes of Kh Khalid Farooq and Malik Muhammad Iqbal — the CCPO Lahore and DPO Gujrat respectively—to deliver. Daydreaming indeed! And when by-elections are around what a lethal pair than DCO Khalid Sultan and SP Ch Shafqaat could be imagined?
A general perception in the provincial administration is that it is Punjab Chief Secretary Hafeez Akhtar Randhawa who is actually leading the Chief Minister down the garden path. Background interviews with some senior officers and independent survey reveal that Hafeez Akhtar has lost his moral authority in the bureaucracy because of his involvement in the Q-League to which he herded prospective winners before elections and projected the image of a partisan administration by participating in its Parliamentary Board meetings. Perhaps the Chief Secretary can rightly take credit for playing a pivotal role in raising the King’s Party.