The caretaker Prime Minister Mir Hazar Khan Khoso received briefings from different ministries/departments and took more than a week to identify fifteen individuals as his cabinet members. One of the fifteen, Dr Mushtaq Ali Khan, refused to resign from his permanent job at the State Bank of Pakistan to become a federal minister for less than two months.
Wajahat Siddiqui was given the portfolio of Petroleum a day later than the other 13 because there was reportedly some concern over whether he needed to first resign as chairman of Pakistan State Oil (PSO) as a condition for qualifying as a federal caretaker minister, or so argued his detractors. The confusion can be attributed to the constitution that is silent on the qualifications/disqualifications of caretaker ministers as well as on the number of caretakers allowed for a term that is unlikely to exceed three to four months if there are no lateral interventions in the democratic process.
The nominated caretaker federal ministers took the oath from President Asif Ali Zardari and vowed to uphold the constitution and to "do right to all manner of people, according to law, without fear or favour, affection or ill will." There were reports that caretaker Prime Minister Khoso met with the President and the Chief of Army Staff prior to the announcement of the cabinet. In addition when the Business Recorder attempted to seek the views of opposition national parties on the caretaker cabinet, including Pakistan Muslim league (Nawaz) and Pakistan Tehrik-i-Insaaf, no one, not even those with perennial verbal diarrhea, expressed any views leading one to conclude that all parties were on broad.
Khoso's appointment has been challenged in the Supreme Court by the Watan Party President Hashim Khan who moved a petition contending that the authority of the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) to nominate a caretaker prime minister as per Article 224 A is repugnant to the constitution and should be struck down; but major political parties are unlikely to go into litigation on this matter. At present all those allowed to contest by the returning officers (ROs) questioning the candidates morals and adherence to the precepts of Islam (excluding those barred from contesting for lying under oath, with reference to their fake degrees, or holding dual nationality by the courts) are focused on getting a party ticket before launching their campaigns. In this context to evaluate a person's religious credentials by labeling his published article as against the ideology of Pakistan without any understanding is taking the job of a RO to a fine art of the ridiculous. Be that as it may the eventual fault lies with politicians who did not get rid of the Ziaul Haq inserted Articles 62 and 63 in the constitution that specified the qualifications/disqualifications of prospective candidates. The irony of course is that the first democratic transition from one civilian government to another through elections, with a neutral caretaker set-up installed as per clearly enunciated procedure, remains hostage to constitutional changes made by two dictators: Ziaul Haq for insertion of Articles 62 and 63 and Musharraf for stipulating that only graduates can contest elections.
The obvious question today is whether the caretakers should take any major decision with far-reaching consequences in the next forty to forty five days or so? One decision that the caretakers may/would be forced to take relates to the appallingly poor performing power sector. The situation as it stands today is as follows: PSO, directed to supply 12,000 tons of oil per day as per instructions of Raja Parvez Ashraf's cabinet in March 2013, cannot do so until and unless there are significant injections from the Ministry of Finance on a monthly basis for the remaining three months of the current fiscal year. It maybe recalled that the former Prime Minister had directed PSO to supply 16000 tons per day with the objective of reducing the loadshedding hours, however, he was unable to arrange the required financing and hence scaled down the daily supply.
The Ministry of Finance in turn has already informed the Ministry of Water and Power that it is unable to release the amounts demanded (57 billion rupees in the current month alone) as it simply does not have the fiscal space to do so. The only way the government can release the amount demanded by PSO is to do what the previous government did with impunity namely print more money/borrow from the banking sector with its obvious negative implications on the state of the economy and/or divert gas to the power sector. Both these decisions can be defined as major policy decisions as both would impact dramatically on not only the budget deficit, with its consequent impact on the rate of inflation and the quality of life of the people of this country, but also impact on national output by curtailing private sector activity as state borrowing crowds out private borrowing. In short these are major policy decisions and there is an emergent need to form a consensus on how much budget deficit can be allowed to exceed the upward revised 6.5 percent indicated in the Budget Strategy Paper (BSP), in excess of 8 percent (as estimated by the Deputy Chairman Planning Commission in a letter to the Ministry of Finance on not taking the Commission on board on the BSP) or in excess of 9 percent as estimated by several private sector economists. The ECP has already blocked the unbudgeted development funds approved by Raja Parvez Ashraf and his cabinet during its last months as pre-poll rigging. Also blocked are the appointments as well as confirming contractual employees by the federal as well as provincial governments.
The caretaker federal, Punjab and Sindh cabinets are being challenged as well notably for the following reasons: Sindh because of MQM's decision to sit on the opposition benches a mere few weeks prior to the end of the government's constitutional term generating much criticism, Punjab as the cabinet, though small, has members who have no experience to undertake the core responsibility of the caretakers namely to hold free and fair elections, and the federal cabinet as there is little need for housing, railways, heritage caretaker ministers given again that the core responsibility of the caretakers is to hold free and fair polls.
Be that as it may, it is critical to note four major factors at play today in the caretaker set-up: (i) the economy continues to be in a tailspin and it is unclear whether a caretaker finance minister even with complete powers would have been able to take decisions that could reverse the trend; however, it is probably fair to say that a neutral finance minister would have reversed the majority of decisions taken by Saleem Mandviwalla as Finance Minister, a man referred to as Mandiwalla based on charges that he approved policies that benefited particular pressure groups; (ii) law and order situation in Karachi has improved to the extent that operations against the criminal elements are visibly continuing unlike during the five years of the PPP-led coalition when operations were severely limited in terms of time and certain localities, (iii) the investigating branch of government, namely the FIA has become more impartial, though National Accountability Bureau Chairman former Admiral Fasih Bokhari, a PPP appointee, retains the position and the prosecution branch of government, the attorney general's office, is continuing to maintain its support for those associated with the former government, and (iv) the caretaker Prime Minister has decided to retain the PPP appointed ambassadors till the next government is in place - a decision that has been opposed by a number of political parties including Dr Shireen Mazari of Pakistan Tehrik-i-Insaaf who argued that all envoys must be recalled immediately as they continue to play a political role that directly impacts on the impartiality of the caretakers. Additionally some provincial governments have also disregarded the ECPs instructions to dismiss their chief secretaries.
To conclude much needs to change for a truly neutral set-up to be in place; however it must not be forgotten that this is the first time in the country's history that a democratic transition is in process and therefore one must overlook some attempts to manipulate the process by former federal and provincial governments - a manipulation that is visibly considerably less than in the past elections.
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