Cricket woes
WITH cricket’s showpiece event, the ICC Cricket World Cup, due to begin next month in Australia and New Zealand, the successive defeats experienced by the Pakistan team in tour games this week as well as a nasty row over central contracts have blighted the national team’s preparations. Pakistan’s back-to-back defeats at the hands of a lowly ranked New Zealand Board President’s Eleven has come as a setback. The team, though buoyed by skipper Misbah-ul-Haq’s recovery from a hamstring injury and the welcome return to form of Umar Akmal, failed to get its act together as both batting and bowling struggled to measure up in the two matches. Meanwhile, the team’s woes have been exacerbated by a needless central contracts row that has been simmering over the past few days, thanks once again to the short-sighted approach of the Pakistan Cricket Board officials.
Instead of issuing fresh contracts to the national cricketers based on their recent performances in international cricket, the PCB opted to extend their previously awarded contracts by three months. This has earned the players’ ire and, to a large extent, has taken their focus away from the job at hand. The PCB decision, besides being shorn of logic, has shown the star performers of the recent series in the UAE against Australia and New Zealand in a poor light. Capable players such as wicketkeeper Sarfraz Ahmed, batsmen Haris Sohail, Fawad Alam and pacer Mohammad Irfan have all failed to find a place in the top categories, while others that remained on the sidelines for the most part of 2014 owing to injuries and suspensions, dominate the contract ratings. The players have also expressed their reservations at the abolishment of the win bonus clause by the PCB which was earlier applicable on a per match basis. With each and every game having utmost importance in the World Cup, the players have demanded the PCB restore the win bonuses which are being seen as an incentive for them to excel in the extravaganza.
Forensic facilities
OUTDATED and ineffective methods of investigation and evidence collection are among the weaker links of Pakistan’s law-enforcement and justice systems. Evidence is mostly obtained through rudimentary methods, and combined with a flawed investigation process, this can result in letting criminals off the hook, or punishment for the innocent. However, if forensic science is properly employed, the scenario can change for the better. For example, Punjab’s Forensic Science Agency has set a positive trend and despite the limitations of the police force, is making an effort to change the culture of investigation and evidence collection. Set up in 2012 by a Pakistani-American expert with support from the Punjab chief minister, the multimillion dollar lab has been praised by independent observers.
The lab has covered nearly all the bases required for a facility to meet the demands of modern forensic investigation, most importantly DNA analysis. But as Ashraf Tahir, the lab’s director general, has said, the police lack training in how to secure crime scenes and collect evidence. This fact has been corroborated by Punjab’s inspector general of police. However, if training is imparted to the force — from the officer level down to the policeman in the field — there is no reason why evidence collection and investigation cannot significantly improve. Whether it is cases of terrorism or regular crime, well-equipped forensic labs staffed with well-trained professionals are essential in investigating incidents.
At present, Punjab’s facility is the only one of its kind in the country. Sindh has a forensic lab, but the facility lacks the capability for DNA analysis. Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan have no satisfactory forensic facilities. Perhaps Punjab’s forensic lab can be used as a template to be replicated in other provinces. In such troubled times, it is incomprehensible why each provincial capital does not have fully functioning forensic investigation facilities. This needs to change: along with establishing labs staffed with independent professionals who can run them, a thorough training of police forces is needed in each province so that modern investigation and crime scene preservation techniques become part of the law enforcers’ standard operating procedures. In a country where evidence is frequently compromised or even hosed down this is a tall order, but it is a change that is essential if police culture in Pakistan is to be positively transformed. Admittedly, such facilities and training will not come cheap; but we can ill afford to continue fighting crime and terrorism using obsolete methods.
Fixing responsibility
THE two-member commission appointed by the prime minister to investigate the recent petrol crisis has blamed the bureaucracy for the shortage, but has absolved everybody of ministerial rank. The report produced by the commission gives different reasons in different places for why the crisis happened at all. In one place it says the crisis was “a result of structural issues and not only an event-driven situation”; in another it openly speculates that private-sector oil marketing companies “may also be involved in creating this artificial shortage”. In yet another place it says the crisis “has a lot to do” with lack of fuel payments from the power sector, but then quickly brushes away these concerns saying “this is not a unique situation for the PSO”.
This is strange, considering that the strongest empirical evidence before the commission was indeed the power sector receivables, which they acknowledge stood at Rs171bn. This may not be a “unique situation” for the company, but defaulting on LCs is, and those defaults had begun long before the crisis arrived at the pumps, meaning the liquidity situation was getting difficult very early on. Yet the commission prefers to resort to speculation when assigning blame, saying for instance that “foul act” on the part of the OMCs “cannot be ruled out”. If such foul play “cannot be ruled out”, on what evidence can it be alleged? How solid is the evidence that the “foul act” was indeed responsible? In fact, in the absence of solid proof, the commission has invoked a speculative reason to try and deflect blame away from the sorry state of PSO finances towards some other, as yet unproven, cause. Beyond speculation, the commission has also indulged in wishful thinking, when blaming the lack of storage capacity for the crisis. If the commission wants us to believe that the PSO management is at fault because “[n]o efforts were made to manage 20-day required stock”, they need to answer a simple question first: when has Pakistan ever maintained three weeks worth of fuel stocks?
The whole report reads like a list of hastily made-up reasons for why responsibility for the crisis must rest only with those operating the oil supply chain machinery. The overriding question is whose job was it to oversee all these officials named in the report and to ensure that they were working together to accomplish their objective? And if nobody wants to assume that responsibility, can we at least know who appointed so many supposedly inept people to operate the oil supply chain? What steps were taken by the federal government when the crisis was brewing in late December? All views of the crisis eventually lead towards cabinet-level accountability, and it appears that the entire purpose of the commission report has been to pre-empt precisely this.
Published in Dawn January 28th, 2015