A consensus is emerging that the Nawaz Sharif administration has remained focused on fighting fires that nine times out of ten received the accelerant from within the ruling party itself. In the case of the petrol crisis the accelerant was provided by the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Resources for not taking account of the rise in gasoline demand due to (i) the shut down of CNG stations in Punjab; (ii) decline in the international petrol price that was passed on domestically; (iii) panic buying once petrol stations began to run out of fuel; and (iv) the oil marketing companies' reluctance to keep the 20-day inventories as per contract as it was leading to losses on inventory in spite of the in-built profit margin in the contract. Supply remained compromised because of the failure of the Ministry of Water and Power to improve performance by either reducing (i) receivables that account for a 300 plus billion rupees circular debt leading to Pakistan State Oil liquidity issues that disabled it from opening letters of credit, (ii) transmission and distribution losses. In addition, the shut-down of Parco refinery due to technical reasons exacerbated the shortage. And finally the Ministry of Finance is to be held responsible because it commits to reforms in the power sector to the International Monetary Fund without taking the ground realities into account namely the federal adjustor remains a pipe dream due to provincial resistance, the increasing private sector receivables and failure to take note of the rising receivables that account for an unrealistic budgeted subsidy targets.
The scapegoats however, have been senior members of the bureaucracy which, according to reports, has spread panic in senior ranks with few competent officials seeking to work in those ministries that are severely challenged. To reverse this trend and to energise bureaucrats to seek out such challenging ministries it is imperative for the Prime Minister to desist from suspending officials without an inquiry, to ensure that an inquiry is conducted by those who are qualified and have no conflict of interest and last but not least, to make the ministers accountable for poor performance in their ministries. The Prime Minister has committed to the public that he would hold those responsible for the petrol crisis accountable and to achieve this objective he needs to first make his cabinet members accountable.
The countrywide electricity blackout on Saturday was, according to the Water and Power Secretary, due to sabotage. It is unfortunate that neither the Federal Minister Khawaja Asif nor his sidekick Abid Sher Ali (in the forefront of hurling accusations against provincial governments where the PML-N does not form the government) deem it appropriate to take the centre stage and inform the hapless people of the country of the reasons for the blackout. Be that as it may, the sustained failure of the PML-N government to seek rapprochement with the Baloch separatists and reach some sort of an agreement 19 months after it took over the reins of government can at best, be seen as yet another failure. And to add yet another political dimension to the energy crisis the failure of the government to decide whether to continue supply of 650 MW to K-Electric from the national grid has already led the MQM Chief Altaf Hussain to threaten withdrawal of support to the federal government on all matters if, as he stated, even one MW is withdrawn.
The indecisiveness of the Sharif administration about matters of senior appointments has reached unprecedented levels and this alone accounts for major bottlenecks in resolving crises and in this context it is relevant to note that the suspended PSO Chairman was on a temporary assignment and barred from taking some key decisions.
What is irking a number of analysts further is that while the government has proactively passed the bill allowing military courts to be set up for a period of two years it has made no effort to strengthen and build capacity in civilian law enforcement agencies that require (i) funds to meet their current expenditure including purchase of petrol, which was severely compromised this month, (ii) no political interference in the investigative branch, however, given that all cases against the PPP leadership are not being proactively pursued leads many to conclude that this is part of a deal, (iii) the prosecution branch remains extremely weak with lawyers preferring to go into private practice rather than join the public prosecution service, and (iv) the capacity of civilian intelligence agencies.
These are just some of the examples of extremely poor governance that is being exhibited by the Sharif administration. As many politicians have recently stated there appears to be a conspiracy within the administration to bring itself down though a non-partisan view attributes it simply to incompetence and refusal to hold the cabinet members responsible for crisis after crisis. One can only hope that the Prime Minister would take cognisance of the situation and take appropriate decisions, however, if he continues to take the same approach as during the past 19 months then the quality of life of the common man would further erode as would the party's popularity.