Keeping tabs on provincial promises

The election season will soon be upon us. But how are the political parties keeping their promises? Prime, the Islamabad-based free-market think tank yesterday released its provincial tracking report. It’s their second such exercise since July 2014. The report puts the three mainstream political contenders – the PML-N, PPP and the PTI – in focus, for each party has a province to govern.

For the uninitiated, Prime has extracted political parties’ promises from their respective manifestos, placed them under relevant heads, and then scored them to arrive at an aggregate score for a province. Each individual score – ranging from 0 (no progress) to 10 (implementation achieved) – is scored in terms of policy and legislative development (max. score 2.5), institutional reforms (2.5), and implementation (5).

So who won? Well, the report doesn’t quite tell winners from losers. But some cues are visible in the evaluation of promises made. Overall, as the illustration shows, only the PML-N government crossed the passing threshold of 5, with an aggregate score of 5.45, for its performance in Punjab. The party, which has improved from its sub par score of 4.6 in 2014, did better on most indicators than its rivals.

Following close behind is the PTI with a score of 4.69 in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (2014: 3.82). Trailing with some distance is the PPP with a score of 3.66 in Sindh (2014: 3.31). While the PMLN can claim victory, its borderline passing rate and a low victory margin suggest that the Sharif-led party, which likes to have an aura of competence around it, could have done more.

The report suggests that the three provincial governments don’t have active rivalry. After all, most of the scores remain unsatisfactory, even as the parties have exhausted roughly four-fifth of their electoral term. Aggregate scores look bad, but will politicians be bothered? They seem to bet, perhaps rationally, on the electorate judging a government on specific outcomes than an aggregate score.

Many provincial failings are captured by the Prime tracker. But for a change, let’s highlight from the report some of the measures that have seen progress thus far.

For instance, among the PML-N’s best scores included setting up district health authorities in all districts (10), setting up autonomous district education authorities (10), easing availability of credit to small farmers (7.5), setting up education endowment funds for higher education for the needy (7), and taking steps for low-income housing (7).

Some of the best scores of the PTI government in KP were captured in establishment of district finance commissions for equal funds distribution (10), changing medium of instruction to English in KP universities (10), hiring teachers within their district of choice (9), incentives for girls’ education (7), computerization of land records (6), and healthcare awareness and drug abuse campaigns (6).

The better work done by the PPP was reflected in mostly agriculture, e.g. flat electricity rate for agriculture (10) and soft loans to purchase agri inputs (7.5). Also in education, it made progress in giving stress to Sindhi and international languages for education (6.5) and bringing improvement in adult literacy rate (6).

It is evident that provinces are placing higher priority on social sector. The report has questioned that “mostly social and welfarist” posture. But the social focus is consistent with provinces’ revised constitutional mandate after the Eighteenth Amendment

The report’s findings are instructive. But what Prime is measuring and how it is measuring are open to debate. For instance, political parties tend to release election manifestos with a federal focus. So the nature of promises/targets in the Prime provincial tracker is not strictly provincial in nature. It puts the focus, substance and timeline of “promises” in disarray.

Then the methodology’s reliance on secondary sources (news stories, public websites, and official data on social and economic issues) may not fully capture progress on the ground. That is one of the reasons why Prime couldn’t examine the progress of the Balochistan government. Nonetheless, Prime’s commitment “to initiate and inform policy dialogue and public debate”, is commendable.

Despite its limitations, this manifesto tracker makes one thing clear: the provinces have still got a lot more ground to cover. One is in full agreement with the report where it exhorts provinces to focus on “chronic issues of governance; such as maintenance of law and order; provision of prompt justice; reform of state services and delivery mechanisms; police reforms…” The clock is ticking.