Governance remains a major issue even fourteen months after the PML-N government took over - a key manifesto promise that the party has failed to deliver on. While critics maintain that no one can possibly beat the Zardari-led government's poor governance record yet the PML-N's record to date is far from exemplary.
The PML-N is at pains to argue that there has been no major mega scam and therefore corruption is at bay. Critics of the party maintain that perhaps the party is more corruption savvy compared to the PPP as its leadership did not entirely rely on kickbacks, which are easy to unearth given almost routine eruption of the whistleblowers; instead the party has embarked on flawed policies ranging from an inordinately heavy reliance on foreign loans, without taking account of negative ramifications in months to come as repayment becomes due, focusing on deficit reduction instead of forming a balance between deficit reduction and growth, and focusing on power generation rather than reforms in the sector including enhancing the distribution and transmission network to enable it to allow more than 15000 MW through the system.
The PML-N during the past one year has persistently challenged the June 2013 Supreme Court verdict, which had heard numerous cases challenging the flawed appointments in practice during the five years of the PPP-led coalition government, including the inexplicable appointment of FA pass Tauqir Sadiq as head of Oil and Gas Regulatory Authority, by first not heeding the short listed candidates proposed by the three-man committee selected for the purpose by the PML-N government - which accounts for their resignations - and in January 2014 issued a notification enabling it to make direct appointments in 23 key organisations in contravention of the Companies Act under which those 23 organisations functioned - a notification that was challenged, as expected by all but those who issued the notification.
In its manifesto PML-N committed to appointing independent and professional boards to run the state-owned entities who, in turn, would appoint the chief executive officers of state enterprises with competence and merit - the only criteria for appointment. Even if one accepts that the PML-N government in general and Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif in particular have the capacity to determine the best man/woman to head the 23 organisations yet what is required of our executive is to set a system in place that would not be dependent on any one individual or party as political power does change hands. Be that as it may, it must be acknowledged that Nawaz Sharif's three-man committee consisted of men of integrity and one would hope that he would allow them to take the recruitment process forward.
Other aspects of the PML-N manifesto with respect to governance require a revisit as after the passage of one year it highlights the marked divergence between the party's pre-election commitment and implementation after it won the elections. The manifesto emphasizes that "the political dimension of democratic governance requires strong institutions like an effective parliament, independent judiciary and Election Commission and a vigilant media." The Prime Minister's and his several federal ministers' rare visits to parliament, failure to implement the verdicts of the courts and ignoring debate and/or work on developing an independent Election Commission till the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf's call for 14th August protest shows that the party leadership, to what many believe is irrevocably divorced from its own manifesto.
Another manifesto commitment to improve governance that has been ignored is as follows: "The PML-N is fully committed to devolve political, administrative and financial responsibility and authority to elected representatives of local governments, under Article 140-A of the constitution, adopted under the 18th Constitutional Amendment. Local government elections shall be held within six months of general elections." Fourteen months later the effort appears to be to delay the local elections rather than to facilitate them.
Civil service reforms were also a PML-N manifesto commitment with the objective of improving delivery of services to the public. There is no evidence that the commitment to "open government through transparency, accountability and participation to fight corruption and improve citizen engagement," has been implemented during the past fourteen months. In marked contrast ministers, like their predecessors in the PPP government, have barred officials from interacting with the media and the Secretary Water and Power ordered that the board that showed daily electricity demand and supply figures be switched off and instead reverted to the usual practice of manipulating demand to show lower energy shortage. Claims that the public sector under a PML-N government would be converted into High Performance Organisation is simply hogwash with little evident on the ground.
Police reforms envisaged in the manifesto included turning all police stations into Model Police Stations, simply semantics especially after the Lahore incident, and all SHOs and public dealing staff trained in people skills - skills that may be some of the ministers need to develop first.
And finally, the PML-N promised in its manifesto that it would give high priority to information and technology sector and develop an information society and knowledge economy that will be accomplished by building on four pillars namely (i) governance, (ii) public services, (iii) local software economy, and (iv) technology. Even diehard PML-N supporters find it difficult to insist that the party in government has achieved any of the pillars; while e-government must postdate higher education levels as well as higher computer literacy than is at present evident even in the doctored data released by the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics.
In Pakistan, it has become the norm for manifestoes to highlight a state of nirvana if the party is elected to power. This is as true of the PPP as it is of the PML-N and the MQM - a party that is a regional as opposed to a national party. This trend will not change until the public begins to hold each party in government accountable for failure to deliver on its election promises. And in this context the opposition parties need to routinely propose a realistic shadow improving governance policy, shadow budget, a shadow foreign policy and a shadow anti-terror policy that would highlight the differences with the prevailing policies.