Pakistan: Public versus vested interest

EDITORIAL

Daily Times

An unfortunate aspect of our polity as it has evolved over the years is the dominance of the ‘philosophy’ that public office is to be obtained purely for the purpose of private gain. Thus the concept of public service has been abandoned. Across the board, the suspicion of all parties pursuing this practice is not without weight. Particularly in the dying moments of an outgoing government, there is a flurry of activity in evidence to leave behind facts on the ground in the form of decisions intended to favour favourites and privilege the already privileged. Something along these lines seems to have occurred according to a story published in Daily Times yesterday. The story speaks of a number of decisions taken amidst the dying embers of the outgoing PPP-led government by the short-lived Finance Minister Salim Mandviwalla, who replaced Hafeez Sheikh. The story says that while the jury is still out on the performance of Dr Hafeez Sheikh as the Finance Minister, his successor managed to get decisions through in a hurry (time was short after all) that had been either rejected earlier or lay pending because of reservations about their impact. The Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Resources pushed through several dubious decisions for which the fertilizer industry, oil refineries, natural gas industry and oil marketing companies had been lobbying for years. The first decision related to the supply of gas to fertilizer factories in direct violation of the Gas Allocation Policy of the ECC. This gas has been diverted from power generation, which is arguably the number one problem for the economy. This decision was rushed through despite the objections of the Planning Commission on, amongst other grounds, the fact that the cost of power generation from oil is three times higher than from gas. Another decision relates to the oil refineries and marketing companies. The approval of Inland Freight Marginalisation (IFEM) for a coastal refinery, which had been twice turned down by both the ECC and the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Resources itself, was done over the objections of OGRA and the Planning Commission. Another decision concerned deemed duty, which originally was intended as an incentive for oil refineries to carry out modernisation. Except one, none of the refineries did, but nevertheless got the benefit of deemed duty from the outgoing government. Last but not least, oil dealers’ margin was increased at the cost of the consumer without any apparent rhyme or reason. These examples, while causing concern, are perhaps only the tip of the iceberg. Government decisions favouring favourite vested interests have become a routine fact of life in Pakistan’s polity. What lends the above examples added resonance is the timing. An outgoing government uses the last possible moments of its tenure to take decisions that favour some interest at the expense of the public interest. If the petition moved in the Supreme Court by Dr Mubashir Hassan regarding last minute appointments, postings, transfers, regularisation of contract employees, development funds’ allocations to make electoral gains by the incumbents is any guide, the iceberg of this form of corruption is titanic. Over time, the country and society at large have seen the exponential growth of a culture of throwing principles, ethics, integrity out the window and replacing them with the Machiavellian approach of achieving personal ambition and aggrandizement without scruples or hesitation. While democracy is in the process of being consolidated, the thoughtful amongst us also need to reflect on the downward spiral we are caught in in terms of becoming a lawless and unprincipled society, where success has many fathers, and ‘failure’ (to achieve, get somewhere, be someone) is an orphan. A sad statement on our collective state and one that needs the most determined effort by those who see this as more destructive of state and society than any other threat it faces to start a public consciousness campaign for the elimination of this spreading evil that has us in its octopus-like grip.