Dark shades of governance

As time passes, the world becomes a bigger mess. Rising human population was bound to escalate demand for everything, but managing demand and the related environmental issues remains the continuing failure of governments everywhere, escalating global poverty and the lawlessness it breeds. To cover-up this failure, governments either hide the truth or misreport it.
An example of hiding the truth was the in-camera session of the Senate' Standing Committee on Finance for examining the allegations that some politically connected Pakistanis used the banking channels to invest in the $500 million Eurobonds floated in September 2015 because instead of fund inflow, it resulted in flight of capital from Pakistan.
The committee chairman admitted before the media that he opposed in-camera briefings, but didn't share the disclosures made in the briefing due to "government pressure" for securing 'national interests'. However, on condition of anonymity, a committee member admitted that SBP doesn't want bank representatives to appear before the Senate committee.
Talking of misreporting facts, in 2011, when the global yardstick of poverty was earnings below $1.25 a day, by redefining it India's National Economic Planning Commission (NEPC) placed earners of daily incomes of IRs 25 ($0.5) in villages, and IRs 35 ($0.7) in cities, in the "above poverty line" category although these incomes didn't afford buying even two meals a day, let alone pay for basic needs like clothing, housing, healthcare, etc.
India's social groups therefore filed a petition in the Supreme Court challenging this distortion and during its hearing, NECP Chairman admitted that NECP's definition of poverty line was the "rock bottom level of existence" and it also didn't specify the goods and services needed for this level of existence. But this trick afforded reporting 37 percent of the population below the poverty line instead of 52 percent.
We are not far behind in this context. Last week, in a meeting to review progress on poverty assessment, the Finance Minister and Minister for Planning & Development were informed that, for a decade, no official data on this subject was released (or assembled?) despite wide fluctuations in consumer inflation index that directly impacted poverty.
The political leadership everywhere was expected to be more visionary, competent, and responsible in managing the affairs of the state. But that remains largely invisible, tragically, more so in the developing countries that need their leadership to quickly develop these abilities for transforming them into developed states.
Theoretically, this outcome was least expected of the democracies, but that's not so; the reason therefor is that while constitutions mandate "government of the people, by the people, for the people" they don't specify "competence" as the basis whereon people should decide who (in Plato's terms) qualify to become the "guardians of the state".
While Articles 62 and 63 of Pakistan's Constitution specify the moral obligations that contestants for seats in the parliament must fulfil, these articles don't mention proven vision, competence, and responsible conduct as the yardsticks for assessing contestants' eligibility. It therefore isn't surprising that, over the decades, democracy failed to deliver.
How seriously the Election Commission assesses the contestants on the yardsticks specified by these articles, is shown by the petitions that fault the conduct of many "elected" parliamentarians during the electoral process, let alone in their past life. Not surprisingly therefore, after being elected, they adopt questionable ways of "serving" their electorate.
One widely observed tendency is cronyism, which is manifested by elevating the undeserving to positions of responsibility in the administration. This is an assured route to corrupting the governance of the state whose outcome is visible in the rapidly sliding performance of every state office and institution, because it is propelled by corruption.
The biggest damage cronyism causes is corruption of the law enforcement agencies as a consequence of which corruption in every state institution goes on unchecked. The Chief Minister of Sindh accepted this malaise, but only after the Supreme Court pointed to it in uncertain terms through its comments on the conduct of the IGP Sindh.
Media reports foretell the opening of another Pandora's box in the oil and gas sector according to which, during the Musharraf regime two foreign companies were awarded licenses for exploring the Saqib, Mami Khel and Maramzai fields within a stipulated period, but the licenses didn't include an Extended Well Testing Facility (EWT) under the 1986 law.
In 2009, the PPP government amended the petroleum policy whereby the EWT facility was extended to these exploration companies. While these companies began producing oil in 2009, courtesy this relaxation, they didn't provide any data thereon to the Petroleum Ministry though, during the next five years, they sold extracted crude oil worth Rs 40 billion to the refineries.
According to media reports, the Petroleum Minister claims that none in his ministry knew about this 5-year long fraud. However, when the Finance Ministry detected this shocking negligence (or connivance in this fraud?), it directed the exploration companies to deposit Rs 40 billion in the national treasury to pay for the oil they kept selling since 2009.
So far, neither have the exploration companies responded to the Finance Ministry's directive nor any senior official in the Petroleum Ministry is prepared to give the ministry's stance on the failure to prevent this un-ignorable irregularity (or connivance therein?) whereby the country was robbed of Rs 40 billion. After failing to responsibly administer state offices (courtesy cronyism that facilitates corruption and theft) and turning them into a mess, the government proposes privatising them, realising little that each such failure manifests ever-higher level of its incompetence and connivance in corruption, and strengthens the demand for its exit.
One such failure admitted last week led the government to propose "privatisation" of the country's highway network. Some show of competence, isn't it? Does a government that can't manage even the highway network deserve remaining in office? But while we are baffled by this move, parliament's Public Accounts Committee (PAC) isn't.
Supporting the proposition to "privatise" the highway network (strangest of solutions), the National Highway Authority (NHA) Chairman made a shocking disclosure before the PAC. According to him, the debt NHA acquired for constructing highways after 1991 now stands at Rs 512 billion because successive governments didn't repay a penny of this debt.
The audit report on NHA had cited irregularities worth billions in the contracts awarded for constructing roads in Multan, the bridge over the Chenab River, and the Ratto Dero-Gwadar and Khunjrab-Roy Kot highways. Also, that during the last PPP regime, in many cases even PC-1 of these projects weren't submitted to the approving authority. Ironically, Khurshid Shah - part of that PPP regime - now heads the PAC.
The "privatisation" solution (ie burial of administrative failures) wasn't contested by any PAC member. Instead, Khurshid Shah demanded that any decision about highway privatisation must be taken after consulting the provinces because that new constitutional amendments have given more powers to the provinces. Some dark shades of governance, aren't they?