Refleksi : Agaknya problem di NKRI mirip di Republik Islam Pakistan. http://www.gulf-times.com/site/topics/article.asp?cu_no=2&item_no=362549&version=1&template_id=46&parent_id=26
Publish Date: Wednesday,19 May, 2010, at 11:53 PM Doha Time Reforming bureaucracy a tall order By Kamran Rehmat/Islamabad For a country like Pakistan, which has see-sawed between democracies and dictatorships, the evolution of bureaucracy has been forced and lateral, not natural and linear, with the result that little works and even files of the president and prime minister go missing somewhere between ministries. Not even the bureaucracy will contest the general perception that it is rusty and ineffective at best. At worst, its capacity is severely diminished due to overt politicisation and corruption in its ranks and the abject failure to attract the best and the brightest of the country's citizens to it anymore. Headed by former State Bank of Pakistan governor Ishrat Hussain, the National Commission for Government Reforms, set up by the last military government but also tentatively supported by the incumbent elected government, has completed an exhaustive two-year review of what ails the civil service of Pakistan and what can be done to prop it up as a standard bearer of professionalism. The commission offers the following key recommendations as the only way for Pakistan to get a service-oriented bureaucracy that can help run the proverbial ship of state properly: Greater accountability: The need to strengthen internal and external accountability mechanisms to address widespread corruption within the bureaucracy; Enhanced efficiency and transparency: The need to promote greater efficiency and transparency by replacing manual processes with automated ones and rationalising antiquated and outdated rules, procedures and regulations; Rightsizing: The need for greater efficiency and affordability through rightsizing (most feasibly through natural attrition) of the large number of government employees in the relatively unproductive subordinate services (Grades 1 to 16) and; Reform of the cadre system: The need to promote equality of opportunities and career advancement within the civil service rather than the tradition of giving preferential treatment in terms of training, positions and promotions to certain elite cadres. Is this the roadmap to recovery? Given the chequered history of attempts to reform and deform the civil services in Pakistan, it seems this is not likely in a hurry - considering that the timing of reforms is as relevant a tactical issue for military as it is for civilian dispensations. The popularly-elected political government wants to break a record by surviving five years and the military establishment is keen to consolidate gains by repairing the damage from Musharraf's overstretch of his last two years. Any serious reforms now will have short-term consequences on the principal stakeholders of the political system, including the parliament and the military, each of which is in no mood to lose their respective influence and its attendant benefits. According to Andrew Wilder, who has recently researched the capacity of Pakistan's political institutions, including the bureaucracy, Pakistan's colonial heritage has heavily influenced its political culture as well as its bureaucratic and political institutions. They were never intended to be democratic institutions that transferred power to elected representatives but rather were designed to help legitimise and strengthen the authority of the bureaucratic state. The power imbalance between the strong bureaucratic institutions that Pakistan inherited from colonial India and the weak representative and democratic institutions has been one of the greatest causes of political instability in Pakistan since its independence. With at least three distinct decade-long periods of military rule, Generals Ayub Khan-Yahya Khan(1958-71), Zia-ul Haq (1977-88) and Parvez Musharraf (1999-2008), in particular, helped create and consolidate the rot by institutionalising ad hocism and skewering the natural progression of career bureaucracy. Each time there was a transition to democracy, in the 1970s, 1990s and recently, there was little serious effort made to institute reforms that would inject back professionalism and meritocracy within the executive. This ensured concentration of powers - usually controlled directly by both civil and military bureaucracies - in the executive branch stayed put to the detriment of legislature as well as the judiciary. Even now it is the executive supported by the bureaucracy that typically initiates legislation, bypassing the legislature by promulgating presidential ordinances. Another legacy holding sway in Pakistan's political culture and institutions, as well as its electoral politics, notes Wilder, is the institutionalisation of patron-client political associations between the bureaucracy and local elites. In exchange for benefaction in the shape of land grants, pensions and titles, feudals, clerics and tribal chiefs were co-opted by colonial managers to provide political stability and collect revenues. After independence, this direct patron-client relationship between the bureaucracy and local elites strengthened the image of the bureaucracy as the providers of patronage, influence and security, thereby undermining the development of political parties that normally would have played this intermediary role. Of the dozen serious attempts to study administrative reforms in the last three decades, almost all seek to restore constitutional security of tenure and safety from prosecution for the civil servants. Both Generals Zia and Musharraf seriously toyed with the idea of restoring these guarantees but understood - as did the governments of Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif - that to retain their grip on the polity they would require a weak and subservient civil service rather than a strong and independent one, and so backed off. However, it is the militarised form of bureaucracy that has really hurt any attempt at reform. General Zia instituted a 10 percent quota for former military officials in the officer grades in the civilian bureaucracy. General Musharraf took this to unprecedented heights. When he was forced to resign in August 2008, there were over 10,000 serving and retired military officers in the civilian bureaucracy that his regime had appointed. Even well before Musharraf staged a coup in 1999, the military was a state within a state. Today, arguably it is the state - the elected civilian government and the recently passed wide-ranging 18th constitutional amendment notwithstanding. The military controls all key state institutions through either direct control or through invisible influence - the civil service, foreign policy, economic policy, home policy, intelligence agencies. The judiciary and the legislature are still recovering from the encumbering if invisible influence of the army. The worry is that due to the emaciated civilian bureaucracy, the administration of state institutions is still transparently marked by the invisible hand of the military and continues to depend on its capacity rather than civilian. *** The author can be reached at [email protected]
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