Mr Ban’s visit
Tuesday, 17 Aug, 2010
Will UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon’s visit mark a turning point in the international community’s response to the floods that have ravaged vast swathes of Pakistan? Will it finally shake the world’s conscience and spur the major economies into offering the assistance that is so desperately needed to provide relief to some 20 million people who have lost everything?
Mr Ban was visibly disturbed after touring some flood-hit areas on Sunday in the company of Pakistani and UN officials. He called the experience “heart-wrenching”, adding that he “will never forget the destruction and suffering” he saw. Mr Ban also described Pakistan’s worst natural disaster as more calamitous than the 2004 tsunami and the Kashmir earthquake of 2005.
These are stirring words from a widely respected and influential man and it is hoped they will convince world leaders that the time to act is now. A mere fraction of the UN’s $460m appeal has been pledged so far even though the situation on the ground is becoming more disastrous by the day.
And the UN’s global appeal, it should be stressed, covers only the initial phase of relief work such as providing food and shelter, clean drinking water, healthcare, etc. Far more funds will be required in the longer term to rehabilitate affectees and restore livelihoods, but then that is not the immediate concern even though it must — simply must — be addressed at some stage.
Right now the international community needs to understand the gravity of the situation and help Pakistan in its hour of need. That said, it must be acknowledged that the global recession may be contributing to the reluctance to assist. Pakistan’s track record of official mismanagement may also be a factor.
Perhaps the only faint ray of hope in these terrible times is that the government and the opposition may just possibly be on the same page. Here it is encouraging to note that Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani has in principle accepted PML-N leader Nawaz Sharif’s proposal for establishing an independent commission that will oversee the state’s flood relief measures. “Men of integrity”, we are told, will strive ‘to ensure transparency in the collection, management and distribution of relief funds’.
Such a commission is sorely needed and the plan should not fall through. Mr Sharif is right in pointing out that we cannot wait endlessly for foreign assistance and it is time for the federal and provincial governments to step up to the plate. Lastly, it is also incumbent on the Pakistani public to be more giving than it has been so far in this time of crisis. There is no time to waste.
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A heavy price to pay
By Tasneem Siddiqui
Tuesday, 17 Aug, 2010
THAT Pakistan is a poorly administered country is widely accepted. Cynics call Pakistan a ‘failed state’. Others prefer ‘ungovernable’.
Although optimists treat our problems as the pangs of transition, scourges such as militancy, insecurity, corruption, and the deteriorating standards of basic services would compel even the most balanced to call our system a “functioning anarchy”.
This article attempts to answer the question of how much malgovernance is costing us. Misrule is a multifaceted menace, and every facet costs money. It is difficult to shortlist its various aspects, but we can say that its major components are: incompetence, inefficiency, corruption and lack of decision-making. Further, incompetence results in flawed planning, or no planning at all, jeopardising our future.
In this high-tech age, developed countries are quick to compute the cost of most events/decisions. Then there is constant research, appraisal and evaluation of public policies and their implementation, which helps in better planning and informed decision-making. Unfortunately we never carry out such exercises and, therefore, the cost of misrule is difficult to calculate. But we can make an intelligent guess by using the 2010-2011 budgetary figures to try and quantify the losses which occur, or are likely to occur due to malgovernance.
Let’s begin with income. The budget shows that in 2009-10 our total tax collection was Rs1,396bn. If we focus only on income from direct taxes, we see that we collected Rs522bn under this head. But most analysts agree that if we control inefficiency and corruption, this amount can easily be doubled — which means our tax collectors, in collusion with taxpayers, siphon off more than Rs5bn every year.
That is not the end of the story. In Pakistan, out of a population of 170 million, we have less than two million income taxpayers (most of them salaried persons). We can increase our income manifold if we tax all incomes irrespective of source, and streamline the collection system.
On the expenditure side, major heads which consume most of our income are debt-servicing, defence, subsidies for loss-making public-sector entities, the civil administration and intelligence services. For infrastructure development we borrow money from international finance institutions. Let us focus on two major items: subsidy to loss-making corporations and the Public Sector Development Programme (PSDP). Take the subsidies first. Rs300bn have been allocated for PIA, Pakistan Steel Mills, the Railways, the Pakistan Electric Power Company, etc due to the losses being incurred by these state-owned enterprises.
Until recently these organisations generated handsome profits. But within a span of a few years they are in the red and incurring huge losses. The only reason is nepotism, corruption, political interference and ineffective management. For example, at PIA the average number of staff per airplane averages 700 whereas the international average is 200. Most of these organisations can easily post profits but are forced to seek support because of malgovernance.
The PPP claims the allocation of Rs660bn for the PSDP as a big achievement, but it is an admitted fact that at the end of the year over one-third of this amount will remain unspent because of lack of institutional capacity. Of the remaining amount, 40 per cent will line the pockets of government functionaries, while 20 to 30 per cent will go to the contractors as profit. Pakistanis should consider themselves lucky if they get the benefit of 20 per cent of the money. The same goes for provincial annual development programmes.
None can deny that in all so-called nation-building departments, corruption has been institutionalised and there is a nexus between consultants, contractors, engineers and their bosses (bureaucrats or politicians) to hijack development funds to the tune of 80 per cent. What happens in the departments of irrigation, communication and works, agriculture and livestock is well known. Huge funds are allocated, but hardly any benefit accrues to potential beneficiaries. This story is repeated every year.
The cost of malgovernance by analysing the annual budget is just the tip of the iceberg. The actual cost can only be determined if we factor in the cost of lack of planning, poor decisions, not making the right decisions at the right time and the cost incurred by the masses in not getting services.
The current power shortage is an example of the absence of planning and decision-making. During Gen Musharraf’s tenure everyone was ecstatic at the high growth rate and the expansion of consumer financing, but policymakers lacked the capacity to understand that this expansion required commensurate growth of the infrastructure, with electricity on top. Maybe they lacked the courage to take bold policy decisions at the proper time.
If there was no consensus on Kalabagh, they could have started work elsewhere. They could have taken a quick decision on Thar coal or the installation of small hydro projects. The delay in decision-making has caused tremendous losses to trade, industry and agriculture. Even if a computer wizard could come up with actual costs, how can one compute the cost of hardship ordinary citizens have faced?
It is difficult to assess the extent of damage and compute its costs in social sectors. For example there are hundreds of thousands of incomplete and unutilised projects across Pakistan apart from ‘ghost schools’ and dysfunctional health centres. How can we assess the cost of ‘education not provided’ or maternal deaths that could have been prevented had health facilities worked properly?
Space constraints limit elaboration, but everyone knows how citizens are fleeced, harassed and insulted in the lower courts, police stations, patwar khanas and other government offices. Nothing gets going without illegal gratification.
The annual turnover of corruption in these places is anybody’s guess. But if we take organisations like the Trading Corporation of Pakistan, the FIA, EOBI and the steel mills and the kickbacks from mega projects and defence purchases, the figures would be astronomical.
Pakistan could have been a Malaysia or South Korea had we not disrupted the process of development in the mid-1960s, and fallen prey to malgovernance. Are we ready to learn from our mistakes or will we be condemned to repeat them?
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Rule of law: a few victories
By Gwynne Dyer
Tuesday, 17 Aug, 2010
NAOMI Campbell may be dim-witted and self-centred, and the poor schmuck she gave the diamonds to 13 years ago is in deep trouble even though he never tried to turn them into cash, but she certainly is useful. If she hadn’t been forced to testify, nine out of 10 people wouldn’t even know who Charles Taylor is.
Taylor, the former Liberian strongman, is on trial at The Hague on charges of terrorism, murder, rape, enslavement and torture. Taylor gave Campbell some illegal “blood diamonds” when they were both Nelson Mandela’s guests in South Africa in 1997, and because Mia Farrow (who was also there) eventually blew the whistle on her.
It’s not a story about war crimes, it’s a media feeding frenzy about celebrities. When Campbell gave her evidence to the international court in The Hague, the number of journalists covering the trial jumped tenfold. But she has served her purpose: now everybody knows that Charles Taylor has been brought to trial for killing, torturing and maiming hundreds of thousands of his fellow Africans.
He is the first former African head of state ever to face an international court for the crimes he committed. There are a dozen others, many still in office, who deserve to stand beside him, but most of them never will. Even in long-established states, the rule of law is constantly being challenged and subverted. In the international sphere, heads of state and other senior government officials were basically immune to prosecution until recently — but Taylor’s trial is an encouraging sign, and it is not the only one.
In Cambodia, another UN-backed tribunal delivered its first verdict last month, sentencing former prison boss Kaing Guek Eav, known as ‘Duch’, to 35 years in jail. Duch was a minor official in the brutal Khmer Rouge regime that ruled Cambodia from 1975 to 1979 and killed about a quarter of the population, but more senior officials will follow.
In the notorious Tuol Sleng prison he ran, 17,000 went in; seven survived. Later this year, the trials of the real leaders of the Khmer Rouge regime including head of state Khieu Samphan, deputy prime minister Nuon Chea and foreign minister Ieng Sary will begin.
Sometimes, bringing the powerful to justice generally involves a certain amount of bargaining. Take Turkey, where the government announced on Aug 9 that 102 military officers accused of plotting a coup against the democratic order would not be arrested after all. In strictly legal terms it was a deeply unsatisfactory outcome. In practical terms, it was the best outcome imaginable.
Turkey is no Liberia or Cambodia. It is a state with centuries of history as an empire, and over half a century as a democracy. But it was always a country where the armed forces felt that they had the final veto. Four democratically elected Turkish governments have been overthrown by the military in the past 50 years.
When the current government, whose appeal is strongest to devoutly Muslim voters, was first elected in 1992, many soldiers felt that they had to “defend the secular state” again. They were wrong, but much of the senior officer corps got involved in discussions about a coup code-named ‘sledgehammer’. It never happened, but years later the story came out. The rule of law was at stake, so the government arrested some senior soldiers.
This was unprecedented in Turkey, where the military have always been sacrosanct. More arrests followed, some trials got under way, and everybody held their breath waiting to see what the military would do. Answer: they nominated a general who had been implicated in the coup discussions as the chief of the land forces.
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Adulterated food
Tuesday, 17 Aug, 2010
THE sale of substandard and adulterated food and drink is not a new issue in Pakistan. However, during periods such as Ramazan, when vendors of foodstuffs enjoy brisk sales, the need to address this vital public health issue is increasingly felt. As reports suggest, the authorities have largely failed to tackle the menace of adulteration, which puts the health of consumers at risk. Focusing on Karachi, a report in this newspaper says that the limited number of food inspectors and a tedious legal procedure mean that the city government is unable to keep a check on adulteration. At present there are said to be about 2,500 cases of food adulteration pending before judicial magistrates. As for the number of food inspectors, as per the rules there should be one inspector for a population of 10,000. With Karachi’s population hovering around 18 million, 13 food inspectors are clearly not enough. If this is the case in the nation’s biggest metropolis, one wonders what the situation is like in other places.
The effects of too few inspectors and a Byzantine legal process are obvious. According to a city government survey of various food items carried out in June, over 20 per cent of the items were found to be either not genuine or in violation of food rules. Apart from the insufficient number of food inspectors, reports from other parts of the country say that in some instances the inspectors are not qualified for their job. The state needs to take food safety seriously. The number of food inspectors in our cities and towns must be increased and eateries’ staff better trained. Officials must also be equipped with better technology to test food quality, and empowered through legislation to take swift action against those who flout food safety laws.
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