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Old Saturday, April 03, 2010
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Exclamation Will the new king with unchecked powers deliver?

By Ansar Abbasi

ISLAMABAD: The otherwise historic constitutional package, presented before the Parliament on Friday, makes the prime minister a king of the parliamentary system having unfettered powers without any checks and balances or parliamentary oversight.

Although it reduces the president into a non-entity, the package left a major flaw in the 1973 Constitution unplugged, ignoring a parliamentary check on the all powerful prime minister to make key appointments in the civil and military bureaucracy, key state-owned corporations, autonomous and semi-autonomous bodies and authorities.

Prime minister’s discretionary powers, which remained the main cause of corruption and bad governance in the country, stay unchecked and the constitutional package does not propose any recipe to keep a vigilant parliamentary check on federal and provincial executives.

The constitutional package, once approved by the Parliament, would give the prime minister unfettered powers to appoint his choice men without any parliamentary oversight or inbuilt system of check and balance.

All the constitutional appointments like army chief, chairman Joint Chief of Staff Committee, naval chief, air chief, attorney general, provincial governors, auditor general, chairman and members of Federal Public Service Commission etc would be made by the prime minister.

Like the prime minister, the provincial chief executives will also have unchecked authority to appoint their choice men as advocate generals and chairman and members of the provincial Public Service Commission.

The prime minister and the provincial chief ministers already enjoy complete authority to make key appointments in the state-owned corporations, public sector authorities, autonomous and semi-autonomous organizations and key civil service posts falling in their respective domain.

The prime minister also enjoys unchecked discretionary authority to make key appointments in the civil bureaucracy like heads of public corporations such as Pakistan Steel Mills, Pakistan International Airlines, Pakistan Railways and several others, besides key bureaucratic positions.

Interestingly, one of the members of the constitutional committee recommended parliamentary oversight on executives (prime minister/provincial chief ministers) powers to make key appointments in civil and military set-up. However, the committee ignored the recommendation with all the ruling parties, whether in the centre or in the provinces including PPP, PML-N, ANP, MQM and JUI, opposing it.

We have seen almost in all the civilian governments in the past even during the governments of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif, both of whom enjoyed two-third majority in their respective assemblies, that the prime ministers massively used their discretionary powers to make key civilian and military appointments, which not only resulted into bad governance but also led to corruption and misrule.

In developed democracies, the executives though are given a lot of powers, such parliamentary oversight and institutional mechanism of check and balance is put in place that good governance is promoted and corruption is effectively curbed.

Even in the recent years we have seen the state institutions like Pakistan Steels, PIA, Railways, Wapda and several others touching all time lows in terms of mismanagement and corruption merely because those appointed as heads of these institutions were the blue eyed boys of the rulers.

This correspondent talked to quite a few parliamentarians on the issue and almost all of them agreed that the executives need to be checked for good governance and to curb corruption but they generally say that such reforms should be made part of the second constitutional reform package, thus clearly reflecting their non-serious attitude to address the issues of corruption and bad governance.

The present flawed system not only allows the prime minister to appoint his favourites but it also opens avenues for politicians and MPs to get their near and dear ones appointed against their choice postings. Such flaws in the system have also led to extreme politicisation of the civilian bureaucracy.

Interestingly, the major political parties including the PPP, PML-N, PML-Q, ANP etc, have also not agreed to a proposal to provide constitutional protection to government servants to enable them act independently and providing them enough safety whereby they could say no to the unlawful dictates of the political masters.
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