The first 100-day agenda

THE NEWS
Tuesday, December 25, 2007
Abid Hasan

The writer is a former adviser to the World Bank.

Soon a new government will be in place. It will face several daunting challenges: Pakistan's slide into becoming a failed state, increasing macro-imbalances, high levels of poverty, and abysmal human development indicators.

The three most important pillars of state – Constitution, Superior Judiciary and Political System -- have been systematically weakened, and civil institutions deliberately allowed to atrophy. Consequently there is no serious challenge to the military unilaterally taking upon itself to rule overtly or covertly. The political system is fractured from military rule, political manipulation by the agencies and poor governance within the parties. Internal strife and terrorism are increasing. The federation is very fragile. The military's public image has been badly tarnished by its overbearing, unconstitutional and intrusive role. The majority of citizens are excluded from the circle of development, and the state as a protector of rights and provider of basic services is virtually non-existent for the poor.

Pakistan will continue to fail its citizens, perhaps not survive in its present from, if the civil and military leadership continue governing on a "business as usual" basis. A paradigm shift in governance and economic management is imperative. The Charter of Democracy and common elements of manifestos provide an excellent platform for a consensus agenda to rebuild Pakistan into a strong federation where there is rule of law, inter-provincial harmony, internal peace and progress for all.

Using the opportunity of the first 100 days honeymoon, the incoming government should embark on an aggressive reform agenda. Some suggestions are made to initiate debate and inject new ideas.

The first area is Governance Reforms to rebuild the critical foundations of the state. Several actions are needed. Restoration of the original 1973 Constitution, while including amendments to rebuild the judiciary and key state institutions, enhance provincial autonomy, fully enshrine the local government system, prohibit the role of the security agencies in politics, and strengthen the political system.

A critical first step to rebuilding the judiciary and other key institutions (i.e., dealing with accountability, media regulation, civil service recruitment, regulating markets, etc) is to (i) select their staff in a depoliticised and professional manner ensuring they meet the highest standards of integrity, independence and professional competence (ii) pay market-based salaries. Together these would ensure that the best Pakistanis work in key institutions. Without the best human resource, these organisations will severely under-perform as in the past, and Pakistan's institutional foundations will remain weak. One mechanism for staff selection in all the above-noted institutions is to establish an independent constitutional entity – a Judicial and Regulatory Staff Commission (JRSC) -- staffed by untainted and unimpeachable retired judges and well respected citizens. The JRSC would validate incumbents and select new staff. The US selection system provides another example.

The superior judiciary needs to be rebuilt by (i).the JRSC selecting judges, new ones and those to be restored (iii) benchmarking salaries to the earnings of top lawyers so the best and the brightest are attracted to give up lucrative legal practice (iii) chief justices, with help of leading Pakistani and international jurists, formulate new guidelines based on global best practice in respect of : accountability of judges; changing contempt of court laws to encourage healthy public debate on judgments; and restricting suo moto and judicial activism to truly major public interest issues

The federation needs to be reinforced by (i) abolishing the concurrent list and devolving most services to the local governments (ii) enhancing the shares of the provinces in the NFC to at least 50%, right away, and in turn higher flow of PFC resources and capacity building support to LGs to enable them to effectively deliver services. (iii) Market-based pricing of water and hydro-carbon resources to enable the provinces to fully benefit from these resources.

The political system needs to be strengthened by (i) overhauling the Election Commission; (ii) having a suitable mix of proportional representation and "winner take all" systems to ensure accurate representation in parliament; (iii) increasing representation of women; (iv) new rules for transparent elections within parties; (v) introducing public financing of campaigns to reduce incentives for corrupt practices by parties for fundraising.

The role of the military should be redefined, while ensuring Pakistan has the finest military machine, by (i) constitutionally prohibiting agencies from indulging in political matters; (ii) holding parliamentary debate on the appropriateness of defence strategy and spending in light of present and future (rather than past) external/internal security threats, and, based on that, revising the military budget; (iii) continuous education within the services on the military's duty to respect and protect the Constitution' and (iv) reducing the military's commercial activities.

Initiating fundamental civil service reforms as Pakistan can no longer afford a mediocre, demotivated and bloated civil services. Measures would include (i) strengthening the Public Services Commission; (ii) benchmarking salaries to market levels and enhancing security of service, while at the same time strengthening performance and accountability arrangements. Market-based salaries are absolutely essential, for as Confucius said, "If you pay people peanuts, you will have monkeys to work for you"; (iii) staff rationalisation; and (iv) increasing the representation of women.

Other key governance improvement reforms include (i) establishing an independent Accountability Commission headed by a retired Supreme Court judge, to replace the NAB which has been politicised and has lost its credibility; (ii) abolishing PEMRA and replacing it by an independent Freedom of Information Commission headed by a retired Supreme Court judge, which would be responsible for both promoting freedom of information in the media as well as responsible journalism; (iii) making PTV independent of the government; and (iv) enhancing respect for the Constitution and the rule of law within society through educating the younger generation and a continuous media campaign.

The second plank of reforms should be a new paradigm to combat terrorism. Pakistan must disengage from fighting other people's wars, and a bold "carrot and stick" programme should be initiated, comprising (i) strengthening the intelligence and establishing an aggressive rewards programme; (ii) ensuring that the fringe religious parties and madrassahs operate fully within the bounds of the Constitution and refrain from bigotry and inciting hate, while protecting their constitutional rights; (iii) requiring the madrassahs to impart government curricula for grades 1-10, in addition to religious education, and rewarding those which comply; (iv) a nationwide campaign to seek popular support for the programme and to demilitarising the mindset of society.

The third pillar of the reform agenda would be actions to sustain a high growth and accelerate poverty reduction. Despite the hype about growth rates, foreign reserves and the KSE index, the economy is now vulnerable to the external payments crisis and slowing of growth. Budget and external accounts deficits are unsustainable. Dependence on uncertain foreign capital is excessive. The energy pricing policy is irresponsible and unsustainable. Inflation is high and hurting low- and fixed-income families. Unemployment is high and human development indicators abysmal. A bold programme is needed to simultaneously achieve rapid growth, sustained reduction in poverty, improvement in income distribution, reduction of unemployment, and a sustainable external position.

On the macro-economic front, immediate steps should include (i) aggressive fiscal reforms to simultaneously reduce fiscal deficits, while enhancing resources for pro-poor expenditures,.as follows: accelerating the stalled FBR reforms ; extending GST and eliminating non-standard exemptions; capital gains tax , especially to capture the very high profits within the real estate sector and stock market; and creating fiscal space by eliminating both subsidies to the rich and the very large number of wasteful and uneconomic projects in the PSDP; (ii) tighter monetary policy, slower growth of consumer credit and reform of the interest rates to improve effectiveness of the monetary policy and reduce inflation; (iii) bold measures to accelerate exports, including: exchange rate adjustment; industry-specific productivity and competitiveness enhancement programmes; and reduction in anti-export bias through trade liberalisation and investment climate reforms; (iv) taxing speculative short-term inflows and increasing attractiveness of FDI in the export sector. It is critical that capital inflows are used productively to create surpluses needed to service them.

In respect of human development and poverty reduction, expenditures should be significantly increased for following (i) income subsidy for the very poor, vulnerable and unemployed including conditional cash transfers to poor families to achieve education/health goals; (ii) a labour-intensive community-driven public works programme (iii) local government programmes for improving delivery of primary level education, health, sanitation and clean water and on-farm water management.

Other high priority actions on the development front should be (i) accelerating programmes to remove supply constraints on essential commodities, to help lower inflation; (ii) initiation of a crash programme to exploit all forms of domestic energy resources, along with rationalising energy prices in line with international prices while protecting lifeline consumers; (iii) reprioritising the PSDP infrastructure investments to fund only investments critical to sustaining growth.

One important ingredient for success in undertaking reforms that the new government must follow is assigning high performing civil servants and fully empowering and incentivising them to implement the special programmes noted above.

Pakistanis are yearning for real change and for a better future. History is replete with examples of countries becoming failed states from myopic leaderships pursuing status-quo policies. The military leadership must recognise that the mighty Red Army, with WMDs, could not save the Soviet Union from disintegrating. It needs to fully embrace constitutional rule and wholeheartedly support the new parliament and government to undertake fundamental governance and economic reforms to rebuild Pakistan. The above agenda is daunting for a nascent government, but these are trying times Tinkering on margin is no longer an option. Implementing the above agenda on the road less travelled is necessary to enable Pakistan to move from a failing state to a stable, democratic and inclusive middle income country.



Email: fffhasan@gmail.com