1 August, 2009

New local government — good or bad

Zafar Iqbal

THE new local government system installed in 2001 is not necessarily bad, except that the manner in which it has been implemented is rather pig-headed. It is anti-deputy commissioner, probably deliberately so.

The election of nazims was supposed to be non-political. The secret expectation was clearly that they would be supporters of the military government. In the 2002 elections it probably went according to the plan and the PPP and the PML-N became minorities in parliament.

On the other hand local government became even more corrupt. The police were handed over to the nazims and, according to my personal experience, the district police officer did whatever the nazim wanted him to do. In order to show that the police were independent of the nazim the Police Act was modified. This made everything worse.

Civil servants who worked in the provinces will confirm this, except that since the present government is anti-nazim their statements are not likely to be believed unless they have recently retired, and even then they would be doubted. In India they have separated the judiciary from the executive, but the responsibility for maintenance of law and order rests with the DC.

In principle, elected local government is a desirable development. When one takes Pakistan’s social and political environment one has to adjust the institution efficiency. In this case the other EDOs would report to the DC who would report to the nazim. This would lead to a certain amount of friction between the nazim and the DC — assuming that the DC was committed to public service. The other issue would be development expenditure. Was it designed for the personal benefit of the nazim or for benefiting the citizens of the area?

Assuming that nazims were elected through a free and fair process they may not necessarily belong to the party in power at the provincial level. Fair play is not part of our political process as yet. But given a relatively free and objective media this may gradually happen. Seeing how the media is behaving at present creates some doubts: they are very careful about criticising the people currently in power, although they had no hesitation in going after Gen Musharraf.

The reason is quite clear if one has read exposés of the Indian press by Rahul Singh and Kuldip Nayar. The capitalist owners of the press have to be careful not to upset the government which has various means of harassment at its disposal. Gen Musharraf likes to defer matters until he has to act in desperation which he did on Nov 3, 2007. Any person with better sense, if he wanted to do that sort of thing, would have done it on March 8 instead.

If the Musharraf regime had been objective about local government, they should have visited India and possibly Sri Lanka. In the West, visits to France, the UK and US would have been useful. There are differences in all three. In France, until recently it was the prefect who monitored the local government — not entirely dissimilar to arrangements in India. In the UK and US things are a bit different. The police there reports to the county chief constable or sheriff.

In the US, I have only experience of California where the police reported to the city manager. This concept was introduced in America to improve the quality of local administration. The city manager/county manager reported to the mayor in council. Since vocational training is important in the US the selection of such people began to shift to individuals who had acquired an MPA degree.

My friend Walter Hahn, who was the city manager of the town to which I was attached, ultimately obtained a master’s degree in public administration along with his son, Curt, from the University of Southern California. He sent me a newspaper cutting which showed both father and son receiving their degrees on the same day. He subsequently moved on to become the city manager of San Diego.

As mentioned earlier, the concept of ‘manager’ was introduced to improve the performance of local government. In Pakistan Gen Musharraf tried to do the opposite by trying to weaken the role of the DC. Perhaps it was the result of conscious or subconscious sibling rivalry. His eldest brother was supposed to be the clever son of the family and as was popular those days joined the Civil Service, renamed by ZAB as the District Management Group and levelled with other services.Currently there is a lot of talk of doing away with the nazim. An elected local government is, in many ways, part of democracy. Checks and balances on the power of the nazim can always be there. The DC will represent the provincial government. There will be some tension between the nazim and the DC especially if the nazim represents another political party. In case he or she is a member of the political party in power the DC will be at a disadvantage.

It all depends on the quality of political governments which tend to be dictatorial rather than democratic. But this is an evolutionary process which will come to a stop unless we continue trying to practise democracy with emphasis on suitable institutional development. Its main constituents are a competent non-political machinery of government, generally referred to as the bureaucracy. A free and diligent media and a competent and independent judiciary, given how we have been drifting over the years, are not easy to bring about.

The other major issue is revenues which should be assigned to the district government. In India, about 100 years ago, with the evolution of increasing government responsibility, a matrix system had naturally evolved. It was not celebrated: it was simply taken as a fact of life. When one comes to think of it all provincial departments such as the police, magistracy, education, health, irrigation, etc operate in the manner trumpeted in business as a great development — the matrix system. Like all systems, it has its pluses and minuses.

The people in power should try and make local government more efficient instead of abolishing it

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When you have to shoot, shoot. Don't talk. ~ The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly

Civilian law enforcement agencies in Pakistan have long been the butt of cruel jokes, even if the sarcasm and anger towards them is sometimes well-founded. The deliberate targeting of Pakistani law-enforcers by terrorists, however, is no laughing matter. Yesterday’s attack on the emergency respondent headquarters in Lahore was at least the fifth attack on police in Lahore. The Lahore FIA offices were attacked less than two years ago, followed by a suicide bombing on a police post near the Lahore High Court, followed by the attack on the Sri Lankan team, followed by the attack on the Manwan police academy. This is not counting numerous attacks on the FIA and police posts in Islamabad and in interior Punjab. And of course, by now most Pakistanis have lost count entirely of how many times the paramilitary forces and police have been targeted by terrorists in FATA, in settled districts in NWFP and particularly in Peshawar. Whatever the terrorists may want in terms of ideological riff raff, it’s clear what they want operationally. They want to terminate the Pakistani state.

Many analysts are often sceptical of the capacity of terrorists to successfully take over Pakistan. They are even more sceptical of the notion that the nukes that Pakistan has built are lying around waiting to be seduced by Bin Laden and his Taliban cohorts. The scepticism is well-founded on the back of the Pakistani military. For decades, by consuming the lion’s share of resources in this country, Pakistan’s formal military has built up a massive infrastructure that will, when push comes to shove, successfully prevent terrorists from stealing Pakistan, or its nukes. In Swat, since May 8, we are seeing exactly that thesis play itself out. When motivated, the Pakistani military is more than capable of destroying the resistance of terrorists.

That’s why the terrorists are targeting Pakistan’s law enforcement entities. Decimating the physical resistance of the Pakistani police and destroying their mental and emotional resolve is the terrorists’ way of getting around the military. Pakistani cops are poorly paid, deeply stigmatised and severely under-equipped. They are a soft-target.

Investing in more equipment, raising police salaries and moving towards eliminating the Brahmin-Shudra divide in the Pakistani police services are the quick fix things that governments (federal and provincial) have clearly already begun doing. Doing that has produced results visible to anyone watching the drama play out in Lahore, live. The speed with which the police system responded to the attack was impressive, relative to its recent track record.

Quick fixes will not solve the problem for the medium and long term, however. Pakistan’s police forces suffer from structural dysfunction of several kinds. Local authority over police forces, vested in indirectly elected district nazims, has not really worked — either because local politicians are too prone to using the police to settle petty rivalries, or because not enough authority is vested in them.

But we also know that the old commissionerate system was hardly a beacon of light — either from an integrity, or a law-enforcement, or an administrative perspective. The colonial model of command and control local administration was not only undemocratic, it actually never really worked.

Of course, one of the core issues is that the police officer that makes decisions is always on loan when making those decisions. The All Pakistan Unified Grades (APUG) of the civil service essentially ensures that a federal employee makes executive decisions in both districts and provinces — all the while pretending to be a subsidiary resource. But subsidiary resources should be invested in the location of their jobs — instead of looking to their mothership, the Establishment Division in Islamabad. This then raises the issue of whether there is really such a thing as a provincial police force at all, what to say of district police services. Every key official of these forces is a federal civil servant, not a provincial one.

Some major technical issues will persist even if structures are sorted out. Investigative capacity outside the FIA is virtually non-existent. Standout examples of innovation and service delivery (like Rescue 15) tend to be politically driven, and are entirely dependent on fiscal pump-priming. The intelligence and counter-intel capacity of the police is also limited.

To repulse the deliberate targeting of Pakistan’s increasingly heroic police forces, legislative measures empowering the police need to be taken, direct executive oversight needs to be strengthened, and dramatic increases in investments in intelligence capacity, investigative capacity, and raw firepower need to be made.

Ultimately, all the behind-the-scenes investment needs to be buttressed with raw firepower that becomes a visible manifestation of legitimate state muscle, like in Turkey. Large, Gladiator-esque young people manning police posts should be tooled with armoured personnel carriers, Kevlar vests, more sophisticated weapons, and an air of overwhelming self-confidence. When a law-abiding citizen sees a cop, she mustn’t feel pity. She must feel secure. When a criminal or a terrorist sees a cop, he should feel his knees buckle with fear — fear of God Almighty, and fear of the bruising he will suffer if he’s out of line. Pakistanis would much prefer a police all dressed up with nowhere to go, rather than to leave them out in the cold, as we have for so many years.

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When you have to shoot, shoot. Don't talk. ~ The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly

Will FPSC chief oversee senior bureaucratic promotions

By Khawar Ghumman

ISLAMABAD, Dec 24: A two-day meeting of the Central Selection Board (CSB) will be held next week to take decision about promotion of civil servants to BS-21 amid a debate on whether it should be presided over by the chairman of the Federal Public Service Commission (FPSC) or a top bureaucrat.

Under an amendment introduced by former president Pervez Musharraf to Section 9 of the Civil Servants Act of 1973, the FPSC chief was made the ex-officio chairman of the CSB. The move was aimed at securing complete control over the civil bureaucracy.

Later, when Gen (retd) Musharraf developed differences with Lt-Gen Jamshed Gulzar Kiyani, the FPSC chairman he himself had appointed, he cut
short the tenure of the post from five to three years through an amendment to the Constitution.

Lt-Gen (retd) Kiyani published two annual reports in which he severely criticised the Shaukat Aziz government for bypassing FPSC’s rules and regulations to place his favourites on key posts. He also challenged his early removal from the post.

The present government, through a presidential ordinance, took away the chairmanship of the CSB from FPSC chief and gave it back to the establishment secretary who headed the board until after the adoption of the 18th Amendment. But under the amendment a presidential ordinance
cannot be re-promulgated unless a resolution to that effect is adopted by either house of parliament.

As a result, the job of heading the CSB went back to the FPSC Chairman, Justice (retd) Rana Bhagwandas.

A meeting of the board has not been held since the prime minister’s decision of Sept 4 last year to promote 54 bureaucrats to grade 22 which was annulled by the Supreme Court on April 27. A number of deserving bureaucrats have retired during the period.

The delay in holding a CSB meeting is having a crippling effect on the administration.

“During the next six to eight months, 19 of 55 federal secretaries will retire and under the new promotion rules an officer should have at least two years of service in BS-21 to get a promotion to BS-22. Therefore, the government will have no option but to offer extension to retiring officers,” a federal secretary said.

The new rules were formulated in August on the directives of the Supreme Court.

The National Assembly’s Standing Committee on Cabinet Secretariat unanimously approved and presented on Thursday a report on a proposed amendment to the Civil Servants Act to allow the prime minister to appoint the CSB chairman.

Most bureaucrats are of the view that top officers head the promotion boards in other civil and military departments and there is nothing wrong if the secretary of the establishment or cabinet division is given the responsibility as has been the practice in the past.

Critics of the proposed amendment allege that the government wants to place someone of its choice as the head of the CSB to promote its favourites.

A retired federal secretary said the civil bureaucracy had been continuously witnessing an increasing encroachment by successive governments since the early 1970s. As a result, he said, the bureaucracy had been politicised and the officials worked to appease the rulers of the day instead of fulfilling their basic responsibility of serving the people.

“The only way to curb corruption is to reform the bureaucracy on the lines suggested by the Quaid-i-Azam that a civil servant should only be loyal to the state and not to the rulers, which is only possible if the governments stop interfering in their domain,” he said.

Source:
http://www.dawn.com/2010/12/25/will-...romotions.html

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When you have to shoot, shoot. Don't talk. ~ The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly

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When you have to shoot, shoot. Don't talk. ~ The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly

Before the quota evil set in, post-independence Pakistan got the best and the brightest boys entering the CSP. Not anymore, though

When I was growing up in the ‘60s, the boilerplate for a dream husband was a CSP. To bag one was everyone’s chase. The mama of the CSP considered her son a swell catch for her to demand anything in the dowry — say a car, imported wardrobe for her son, a beautiful house with value-added gadgets thrown in — from the girl’s family.

Greed had ballooned to ugly heights manifested in the prenuptials and wish lists brazenly forwarded from CSP-wallahs. One heard of many a betrothal cut asunder because the made-to-order dowry wasn’t good enough. Bidding wars were the norm and ditched maidens, no matter how fair, a common sight.

Simply called CSP, who then was this chap inducted in the Civil Service of Pakistan? To demystify this ‘piece of moon’ or chaand ka tukra as he was known, let’s cut through the moonshine showered around his persona. We will find that he was an ordinary guy, smart, clever and a nerd perhaps, to have cleared the exam and more importantly the viva voce. Any graduate could sit for the yearly exam, irrespective of caste, creed, wealth, status and gender. You could be a peasant or a prince, it was irrelevant as long as you were bright. A level playing field was provided for all, especially before the curse of the quota system botched up merit and brought in nincompoops by the dozens.

Post-independence (before the quota evil set in), Pakistan got the best and the brightest boys entering the CSP. Groomed to be rulers, the young men led charmed lives right from the time they were handed charge of a district, division or a government department. They were the acknowledged kings. They were the accepted benevolent rulers enjoying undiluted powers vested in them by the centre or the governor of the province where they served.

The CSPs may have developed outsized egos. They may have taken themselves too seriously. Some may have become arrogant, others haughty. Their wives may have thrown their weight around as big begum sahibas and terrorized the lesser beings around them. Their children may have been conscious of their daddies’ pelf, power and perks. Their relatives may have tried using their connections for getting petty work done.

But in sum, the CSPs of those halcyon days were not a corrupt cadre. Nor were they hustlers (except for one or two.) Neither were they jockeys riding political power horses. They were plain boring paper-pushers; bureaucratic babus. The diligent ones brought home a box full of files every night that needed close scrutiny and quick decisions. Disposing of public business was their training ingrained into them from the beginning. The common man received swift, fair and transparent hearing from these officials, albeit stiff-necked with shades of brown sahib still prevalent in their carriage despite the Brits having quit our soil in 1947.

Enter the military. But wait, before we bring in the much maligned military, there arose another force from within the service that hijacked the CSP cadre and destabilized the political process in Punjab after partition. It was known as the police.

The IG or the inspector-general of police enjoyed unlimited powers. He had the ear of the governor and the chief minister. The IG was also head of the province’s intelligence agency, known as the CID (Criminal Investigation Department). “This CID had been the most hated and dreaded organization in Punjab for several decades before independence. It could make or mar the career of young men or act as an oppressive force against peaceful citizens in several ways,” writes an officer who belonged to the Indian Civil Service (ICS) which was the precursor of the CSP.

When the first battle began between the first governor of Punjab, Sir Francis Mudie, and the Muslim League appointed chief minister the Khan of Mamdot, IG police Qurban Ali Khan supported Governor Mudie. More about the spat later.

The Englishman Mudie then turned his guns on the acting chief secretary, Khawaja Abdul Rahim, and another officer, Hassan Akhtar. He directed senior officials to conduct an inquiry against them. Manzur Qadir was picked by Mudie to act both as procurer of evidence and a prosecutor counsel. “What Manzur Qadir did was to walk into my room in the late afternoon every day and to ask me to send for a particular official and get me to record his statement with reference to the subject matter known to him. After the statement of two officials were recorded in this manner on two consecutive days, l told Manzur Qadir that while l was no lawyer, l had administered law for a number of years, the procedure was open to serious objection and would most probably be inadmissible in evidence. When the case came up before the court, objection was taken by the defence counsel to Manzur Qadir appearing as prosecution counsel,” remembers the man who was serving as the chief secretary then.

As anticipated the court held that the counsel had sought to act both as an investigator and prosecutor and this was against the canons of law and justice. The court called upon Manzur Qadir to withdraw from the case. This case attracted a lot of notoriety in the press. Abdur Rahim was in due course removed from service but allowed compassionate pension. Hassan Akhtar was also removed from service after the court had held charges framed against him as established.

This was the first assault on the Civil Service of Pakistan from outsiders.

And the last occurred recently when four members of the Federal Public Service Commission (FPSC) suffered collateral damage because of the reported falling out of their chairman, Gen (retd) Jamshed Kiani, with the president and the prime minister. Bureaucrats are not meant to talk to the press, but the general who belonged to the famous 10 Corps that has conducted coups on civilian governments in the past including the last one on Nawaz Sharif with Kiani at the helm unilaterally decided to go to the press and open up his heart.

But if Gen Kiani’s conscience didn’t allow him to keep silent over promotions and extensions ordered by the prime minister, he should have resigned instead of continuing in his job and at the end of the day, call the press to speak evil of the prime minister and president. As an officer and a gentleman, the best course for him would have been to request the president to relieve him of his chairmanship as it was not possible for him to accept the two undeserving candidates the prime minister had cleared for promotion.

Why drag in the four former bureaucrats, members of the FPSC, into the fray and take them down with him? To get rid of Kiani, an ordinance limiting the tenure to three years instead of five was passed and the four bureaucrats who had completed their three years were told to go home. Hence the collateral damage that these four suffered.

Why have a general head the FPSC is my quarrel with the chief executive of the country. Under him the militarization of civil service has made the CSPs and the CSS (Central Superior Services) a deadwood. How did it happen and why did the bureaucrats permit infiltration from the khakis in their ranks is a story of deceit, betrayal, intrigue and above all a breach among the bureaucratic ranks that defies repair.

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Doing your best means never stop trying !!

Some passerby may some day decide to go deep-sea diving and bring ashore the sunken vessel that has buried within it the secrets of the rise and fall of the CSP

NOT one to harp on my articles past, nor reproduce emails from afar, as some columnists do, I must perforce revisit ‘The rise and fall of the CSP’ only to round up some more kinetic energy among the CSPs (Civil Service of Pakistan) and their many antagonists. The ‘Letters to the Editor’ column of this newspaper and other dailies indicate a lively proclivity for bureaucrat-bashing by letter writers. It seems the public is not in a forgiving mood; nor are the CSPs ready to accept the charge of administering with arrogance, even though the service today is dead as a dodo.

A retired CSP now settled in North America shot off an email to another CSP friend in Islamabad critiquing my article. He wrote that I had “surprisingly” missed “the all-out assault” on CSP unleashed by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and how “ZAB’s latrine [sic] entry” was made senior through the device of the secretariat group. “This assault led directly to the loss of confidence” resulting in overall deficient administration by the deputy commissioner of a district. “With piplias (CSPs) able to rig the 1977 election, the stage was set for the removal of ZAB and his ultimate unfortunate end,” ended the CSP from North America.

Indeed it is true. I am at fault for not writing how in 1973, the CSP under Prime Minister Bhutto’s directives became defunct. According to a former CSP who was sitting with Bhutto when PTV was calling the 1977 election results, declaring all the PPP biggies from the NWFP, Punjab and Sindh as victors sweeping the polls “unopposed”, the prime minister’s face turned sickly pale. He knew his “loyal” cadre of ex-CSPs had unwittingly vanquished him by getting their minions to stuff the ballot boxes. “Mr Bhutto lost his cool and was furious with the chief secretaries of these provinces for their ‘over kill’,” remembers the CSP. And he paid for it with a hangman’s noose round his neck.

As we all know, after partition, the ICS or the Indian Civil Service converted into CSP and along with PSP (Police Service of Pakistan) was put under the umbrella of All Pakistan Service, while the Central Superior Services (CSS) included the Foreign Service, Finance and other services such as Audit and Accounts, Railway Accounts, Military Accounts, Taxation, and the Customs and Excise Service (remember, Customs because the hot favourite of CSS boys who wanted to get rich overnight). The CSS also consisted of Postal Service, Military Land and Cantonment Service, Central Secretariat Service, and Central Information Service. Each of these services had its own cadre and composition rules, specifying the total cadre strength in terms of its number of positions.

Bhutto brought all of them under one roof and sent them together for their training at the Civil Service Academy in Lahore. Wrong move, cried out the CSPs, but none heard their cries for help until they went dead.

Reminiscing about CSP colleagues and their brides, the email from North America continued: “She (that being me) could have added on the lighter side that most CSPs who married rich lived to rue the day as their wealthier wives had a domineering attitude. Some CSPs who were sensitive men did not marry at all. They felt that they could not keep a wife (of the sort they aspired to) at the low salary income that was their lot in government pay scales. Of course in Ayub Khan’s era, many CSPs were black sheep but then President Ayub himself was not above board in his public and personal dealings.

“The then deputy commissioner (DC) Jhang was slapped by police during Nawab Kalabagh’s days as the superintendent police (SP) Jhang was Governor Kalabagh’s appointee and the poor DC was not on the inside track. This happened at Trimmu headworks while the DC was going to spend a social evening with the Irrigation boss.”

Just hold it there ... what else is new? Up until today, the bureaucrats get badly thrashed up. And they don’t have the guts to stand up in unison to protest. A 50-plus joint secretary responsible for making the budget was bashed up by an MNA, 20 years his junior, from the ruling party. The guy had to go to the hospital to be patched up. Guess what? The matter has been hushed up and the officer left licking his wounds in some corner of the secretariat probably cursing his own luck for the spat. Chaudhry Shujaat of the Pakistan Muslim League is too powerful a man for any bureaucrat to lock horns with.

Let me get back to the CSP’s email from North America. His CSP friend in Islamabad, a retired federal secretary, wrote back: “But more important than the training are the role models our seniors offered. My first three DCs were no good. The first one was very honest but would do anything to please his bosses. The second one was a political animal and would do more politics than the politicians. Governor Kalabagh would ask his advice as to who should become the Muslim League president of the city under his administration. The third one personally visited the site of a public meeting and had it flooded and electrified before Bhutto’s arrival. He was accompanied by the commissioner; the same commissioner who tried to browbeat me into rigging the constituencies of the forthcoming local elections. All the DCs I mention are alive today and I can go on and on about how mediocre they were. We (the CSPs) thought we were superior, but we were not. Some among us may have been great, but then you can find such exceptional people among the proletariat too.”

The above email exchange between the two retired CSP friends, discursively casual, nonetheless shows us the tip of the iceberg which hit the unsinkable CSP vessel and like the great Titanic sank it unceremoniously. Like the Titanic, the CSP saga lies buried on the lightless ocean bed with all its glorious and inglorious feats disintegrating into nothingness.

But wait, some passerby yet may some day decide to go deep sea diving and bring ashore the sunken vessel that has buried within it the secrets of the rise and fall of the CSP. They are waiting to be told but who will be the first to undertake such an odyssey is not for me to wager a guess. Till eternity then ...


NOTE: Anjum Niaz is not a CSP. She is a Pakistani Journalist living in states.

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Doing your best means never stop trying !!

Pakistan Wants Professional Bureaucracy

Shaukat Masood Zafar

The main function of bureaucracy in any part of the world is to implement the policies of the sitting government with full commitment and devotion. The basic idea behind the formation of bureaucratic structures was to provide ‘permanent’ government in the sense that the bureaucrats kept running the system of the government for the larger benefit of people as they were and are civil servants. Political executive in the form of politicians could come and go but the bureaucrats stay on to look after the working of the governments.

So their job has never been formulation of policy. They do help political leadership in policy making but never make policies themselves. It is within the sole domain of the politicians to formulate policies as their mandate stems from their being elected representative of people. It is a pity that the political class has abandoned its role of policy formulation and bureaucrats have taken over this role by filling in the vacuum.

Unfortunately our bureaucracy was and is involved in corruption rather it has become the strongest Mafia of the country. Bureaucracy in Pakistan has always been in the background of every coming and going government and in fact it is an impediment to an efficient and effective government. The highly trained bureaucratic expertise and experience always prevail and dominate against the less expert ministers who ostensibly run the administrative units. It is this group of bureaucracy who has been along with the military generals formulating the policies and political as well as ideological framework of Pakistan and being permanently in office, unlike the politicians, it is they who have the power to actually govern the state as an administrative group. Rather the stark reality is that most regimes in Pakistan including martial law Governments have played into the hands of bureaucracy.

In fact the so called administrative reforms of 1973 were a major setback to the well-entrenched Civil Service of Pakistan, as the CSP was made the prime target of these changes by the Z.A.Bhutto regime. A large number of CSPs were sacked, constitutional guarantees of civil servants were withdrawn, and a system of lateral entry was introduced. In the new dispensation of PPP it was not merit, hard work or efficiency, but loyalty to the master which was the basis for all recruitment, promotions and postings. Z.A.Bhutto inducted 514 lateral recruits into the bureaucracy and diluted the authority of the Federal Public Service Commission. The immediate impact of the implementation of the administrative reforms drastically changed cadre of Civil Services of Pakistan. The CSP was abolished; the reservation of posts for CSPs and other elite services was discontinued, the CSP Academy was abolished and a joint training system was introduced, the domain of the All-Pakistan Services newly-constituted as the All-Pakistan Unified Grade was expanded to include a majority of non-CSP and non-PSP officers, and finally it also adopted of a uniform scales of pay which eliminated the financial advantage of the CSP in salary structure and introduced a system of lateral recruitment. This model of patronage, which dispensed with professionalism and performance and promoted loyalty to rulers, has been religiously followed by all subsequent political governments.

The governments of Benazir and Nawaz Sharif — to retain their grip on the polity they also required a weak and subservient civil service rather than a strong and independent one, and so backed off. Due to continuous political interference and weak decision making power of our politicians, the bureaucracy has grown up, with the needs of time, in a highly developed “power complex”. Weak and corrupt politicians played a decisive role in making the politicians weaker and weaker pushing up the bureaucrats to higher position of not only executive control but also policy making. Constant political interference by the politicians just to cover their corruption and corrupt practice is in fact negation to evolve strong, stable and genuine institutions in Pakistan.

Result is that, of the many challenges, pervasive corruption, bad governance, deteriorating rule of law and weak state institutions are now impediments to Pakistan’s successful transition to a real federal republic. A series of failures, deteriorating rule of law, fragile security, two-digit inflation, slumped economy, growing unemployment, rampant corruption, widening poverty, moribund development, rising trade deficit, unregulated market, politicized bureaucracy, poor service delivery, increasing debts, derelict public institutions and fractious politics are now characteristics of Pakistan’s democratization process. Democracy has not been able to deliver development and good governance as expected. Pakistan is facing a Herculean challenge to promote good governance and control corruption to restore decreasing people’s trust in democratic system because of our bigoted political parties.

Standards and quality of life being enjoyed by the majority of our bureaucrats today leave no room for doubt that it has become an extremely lucrative and comfortable business to be a bureaucrat. The glamorous lifestyles reserved for the bureaucracy in Pakistan is with very few parallels in the contemporary world. Personal interests of the ruling elite and bureaucratic class are the main hurdles in real development of the country.

Weak state capacity hinders development and good governance, which is a pre-requisite to institutionalization of the democratic system. Therefore, the focus of political leadership in Pakistan should be to create political stability and good governance for at least a decade to come to materialize the long-sought economic transformation. Political parties in Pakistan see democracy just as a ‘legitimate recourse’ to grab power. This narrow interpretation of democracy not only distort the true meaning of democracy but also alienate the general populace who has become disgusted with these so-called democrats who seem no more interested to the common cause for good governance, institution building, security, development, effective services and strong rule of law.

In two decades of fragile democracy in Pakistan, many institutions have been destroyed. We have destabilized social harmony, ruined bureaucracy, police, judiciary, local bodies and many other key institutions. The civil servants have lost their worth, value and vigor. The performance and merit has become irrelevant for posting, promotions and patronage now and civil servants are transferred, sidelined or suspended with the stroke of a pen, just like ordinary peon. A consistent bureaucracy is a requirement for continuity of a national policy-bureaucracy implying firstly the secretaries and those working under them to serve the minister in charge of a subject; such staff must not change with the change of a minister and such secretaries must be appointed for a permanent term by an independent body and not the minister; hence is the term permanent secretary in the days before the bureaucracy was politicized after “restoration of democracy” in 1988. It is time to reinvent the bureaucracy’s role. It would take decades, if not years, for a committed leadership to rebuild these institutions. We have to bring back the era in which the civil servants enjoyed immense power, perks and privileges side by side enormous responsibilities and tight accountability, and give them back constitutional guarantees of their service.

Source:
http://www.pakspectator.com/pakistan...l-bureaucracy/

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When you have to shoot, shoot. Don't talk. ~ The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly

By: Staff Report | Published: January 01, 2011

ISLAMABAD - The Central Selection Board (CSB) on Friday promoted over 65 bureaucrats from BPS-20 to BPS-21.

The officers included 34 from the District Management Group, 11 each from the Police Service and Secretariat Group and the remaining from the Military Lands and Cantonment Group, Information Service Group, Foreign Service, Audit and Accounts and the Postal Service.

Nasir Durrani of the Police Service and Shabbir Anwar of the Information Group are also among those promoted to BPS-21.

The board met with FPSC Chairman Justice (r) Rana Bhagwandas in the chair.
The CSB is meeting again today (Saturday) to consider the promotions of the remaining 27 officers of BPS-20.

The CSB will also consider the promotion of 70 officers of the Inland Revenue Services, 79 officers of DMG and 20 police officials from to BPS-20.

Source:
http://pakistantoday.com.pk/pakistan...icers-to-BPS21

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When you have to shoot, shoot. Don't talk. ~ The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly

ISLAMABAD: The Central Selection Board (CSB) on Saturday recommended the promotion of 128 bureaucrats to grade 20.

The secretariat group that serves the federal bureaucracy secured the most promotions to grade 20, trailed by the district management group (DMG) officers.

The board recommended 50 officers of the secretariat group for promotion to grade 20, according to the officials of the Establishment Division. Meanwhile, 32 DMG officers, 30 officers from audits and account group, four officers each from the military land and cantonment group, intelligence bureau and the foreign services and two officers each from the information and postal services were recommended for promotion to grade 20.

The meeting to review the performance of civil servants in a ten-hour long session was chaired by chairman of the Federal Public Services Commission Justice (retd) Rana Bhagwandas at the Cabinet Secretariat.

On Friday, the board had recommended the promotion of 78 government officers to grade 21.

The board recommended the promotion of 34 officers of DMG, 16 from the secretariat group, 12 officers of the police service group, six officers belonging to the audit and accounts group, four from the foreign service, three bureaucrats from the information group and one officer each from railways, postal services and the military land and cantonment group to grade 21. Meanwhile nine police officers were promoted to grade 20 at that meeting.

The summary of names of the officers recommended for promotion will be forwarded to Prime Minister Syed Yousaf Raza Gilani within a few days, said secretary Cabinet Division Chaudhry Rauf while talking to The Express Tribune.

However, some bureaucrats’ promotion was deferred due to litigation issues and shortage of time. The chairman assured the members that another meeting would be convened soon to address this.

The board met after nearly a year, mainly because of legal hitches. Now that the ordinance concerning the law for civil servants has lapsed, the FPSC chairman is empowered to head the board, The Express Tribune has learnt.

The board members appreciated Justice (retd) Bhagwandas for his thoroughness and familiarity with the officers’ career records, sources said.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 2nd, 2011.

Source:
http://tribune.com.pk/story/98038/st...for-promotion/

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When you have to shoot, shoot. Don't talk. ~ The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly