Six weeks after it took over the reins of government, the Khan-led administration launched a comprehensive campaign to highlight its successes including a commitment to adhere to the Prime Minister's narrative of protecting the weak, getting the rich to give back to society, instructions to all ministries to stop making appointments in their own or other ministries and to go paperless.
Seasoned analysts, without doubt, would either dismiss and/or proactively challenge the implementability of these 'decisions' as they are essentially exhortations. For the Prime Minister to urge his cabinet colleagues to protect the weak without appropriate changes in the laws of the land and, more importantly, without a change in the mindset of the bureaucrats who implement the laws as well as the lower judiciary that continues to be overwhelmed by the sheer number of cases and periodically subjected to disrespect by lawyers, is an exercise in futility. Further, Prime Minister Imran Khan's bureaucratic appointments as well as the content of his two speeches to civil servants - in Islamabad and Lahore - has seriously compromised the possibility of success of his exhortation. Those elevated to senior positions not because of relevant experience/performance but because of their loyalty to Ishaq Dar, the de facto deputy prime minister during the Nawaz Sharif tenure, have been retained in key positions.
Governance reforms are a very important component of the commitment made by the PTI to the people of this country and the Khan administration must desist from relying on the ability of the prime minister and his cabinet to make the right selection and instead rely on a depoliticized mechanism focused on selections based on merit. The apex court during the PPP-led tenure (2008-13) directed that a three-member federal commission be set up to ensure that all future public appointments are made on merit; sadly however the man who had sought this ruling, Khawaja Asif, then petitioned the apex court to reverse this decision after the PML-N government came to power on the instructions of the then prime minister Nawaz Sharif who had initially set up such a commission and staffed it with three men of known integrity but did not implement their recommendations prompting the three men to resign. Imran Khan would be well advised to set up such a three-man commission with individuals of high integrity.
In this instance it is also relevant to recall that before becoming prime minister, Imran Khan constantly ridiculed and challenged the prime minister's ability to perform the function of patron in chief of cricket and hockey. After the Pakistan cricket team's poor performance in the Asia cup Khan has now directed that a report on why the team performed so poorly be submitted to him. Surely the man he appointed as the chairman of PCB has the responsibility and indeed more time than the country's prime minister to look into the matter!
The Khan administration wants the rich to give back to society and has decided to go against 100 top tax defaulters with Fawad Chaudhry, the Minister for Information, stating that "while implementing reforms and accountability initiatives, the government will not be blackmailed at the hands of mafias." Unfortunately the supplementary budget of the incumbent government indicates that it succumbed to pressure from the real estate and car mafia by withdrawing the condition of non-filers not being able to purchase land costing more than 40 lakh rupees or expensive cars.
Chaudhry further stated that the first stage of reforms of the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) are 'complete' and details would be provided by the finance minister Asad Umar including continuing tax exemptions for provincial and federal administered areas. While the devil is in the detail or in other words to better assess the reforms one needs to them to be made public yet the government would be well advised to consider two disturbing elements with respect to the existing tax structure: (i) the focus must be on expanding the tax net, not on raising taxes on existing tax payers - a policy followed by previous administrations and which has been followed by the PTI administration in the supplementary budget; and (ii) withholding tax must be imposed only in the income tax mode, and not on products/services as is the case today which then makes this an indirect tax whose incidence on the poor is greater than on the rich. The National Taxation Reform Commission report is a comprehensive non-partisan list of recommendations and Umar should not try to reinvent the wheel and take these recommendations on board.
The direction to ministries to go paperless is a positive move; however, a better move to save the environment would have been to ban the use of plastic shopping bags in the country.
Three other decisions taken by the cabinet were revealed by Fawad Chaudhry on Thursday: a comprehensive policy would be prepared for 2 million documented Afghan refugees currently being treated according to international conventions; and the launch of an anti-encroachment drive in Karachi on a similar pattern as in Islamabad - actions that have released billions of rupees of real estate and is welcomed; and strengthening the federal right to information act.
Fawad Chaudhry also stated during his post-cabinet meeting briefing that a high-powered Saudi delegation would arrive in Pakistan on Sunday (yesterday) to invest in energy and other sectors under the umbrella of the China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). There are high hopes in the country that Saudi Arabian investment would considerably reduce the need for procuring foreign loans or going an another IMF programme however one would hope that binding deals are signed and not non-binding memoranda of understanding.