The 100-day relevance

Legal eye
The writer is a lawyer based in Islamabad.
As we relish the PML-N’s honeymoon moment, flirt with the possibility of a transformed Nawaz Sharif and celebrate democracy’s ability to light a candle in pitch dark (literally – not to mention the heat), let us also remember the vices of power politics. Notwithstanding how purposeful and genuine the intent of the PML-N’s top leadership, it is only a matter of time before we hear about the compulsions of power and diktat of expediency. The mandate of an elected government is most potent when it is voted in and from there on it consumes its political capital every single day. This is what makes the first 100 days relevant.
The first few months set the tone of what is to come. Once a direction is set and momentum built, inertia itself can sometimes take care of the countervailing forces of status quo. Let us not forget that, while every change brings hope for the hopeful, through these elections we have not voted in any outsiders to the system or a non-elite so to speak. And this trait of our new parliamentarians isn’t limited to PML-N members, but equally characterises the PTI. Javed Hashmi and Shah Mehmood Qureshi, the leading lights of the PTI during this National Assembly’s inauguration, have been permanent fixtures in Pakistani politics and are as old as the hills.
You can’t teach an old dog new tricks, states conventional wisdom. But what if the old dog wants to learn new tricks? Now this conversation is moving into the realm of miracles. But if truth be told, our hope for change today does rest on belief in miracles. The cynic will quote Einstein’s explanation of insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Einstein was a man of science but in social science two and two don’t always add up to four. Pakistan will change if old and experienced politicians unlearn bad habits and begin practising a new ethos in public life and then inspire the generals, bureaucrats and judges to follow suit.
The change we crave is not going to come from a change of policies alone, but from a change of behaviour. We have very little room to get our policies vis-à-vis key challenges (energy, economy, terrorism) wrong. But we have no room to get our attitude wrong. While misdirected policy can be tweaked, it is hard to change behaviour midcourse. The policies that have dug us into a hole weren’t contrived in a vacuum. They are the products of a retrograde mindset, a depraved ethos that pervades our public and social life alike and defines notions of honour, merit, loyalty and goodness. What we need to change is our approach to these concepts.
In our private and public lives, it is not the strength of one’s character or personal conduct but pedigree that defines honour. Incredible that in this day and age being honourable is still largely an incidence of birth. It either runs in your blood or it doesn’t. Your merit is not determined by what you know and what you do, but who you are and who you know. The only form of loyalty recognised is unconditional personal loyalty; loyalty to principle being a hazardous trait. And why have we lost our ability to speak our minds? Have we taken Falstaff’s counsel to heart? Isn’t sycophancy the direct product of a culture that deems discretion the better part of valour?
Now one doesn’t expect Nawaz Sharif to cure our nation’s proclivity for flattery, servility, nepotism, expediency and principle-trumping loyalty in the first hundred days. But if he doesn’t allow regressive socio-political ethos to inform the choices he makes during the first 100 days, he might create space for himself and his team to make the tough choices that Pakistan urgently needs and start building a system of governance that moves away from patronage dispensation and instead focuses on service delivery. This is easier said than done. The most stringent challenge of leadership is imbibing and then inspiring behavioural change.
To give him credit Nawaz Sharif has passed muster on the issue of Balochistan’s CM. Would the Balochistan PML-N have cheerfully handed over the seat of power to Dr Abdul Malik Baloch in the name of mainstreaming nationalists? This ability to do the right thing at the expense of upsetting friends and supporters will whittle down as time passes, unless it becomes an integral part of Mr Sharif’s new persona that admits of no exceptions. The initial appointments made by the federal government are also unexceptionable. You can’t go wrong picking individuals of ability and integrity such as Nasir Khosa, Aftab Sultan and Zulfiqar Cheema.
Nawaz Sharif stated in his inaugural speech before the National Assembly that there will be no room for nepotism and corruption in his new government. Shahbaz Sharif stated in his first speech before the Punjab Assembly that he will rout thana and patwari culture. Words are cheap they say, and the proof of the pudding is in the eating. But if the Sharifs can abide by these two commitments alone, they would have laid the foundation of a new Pakistan. Delivering on these commitments will require not just changing the complexion and orientation of institutions responsible for service delivery, but also rebuilding their capacity.
Routing the thana and patwari culture is more than overhauling the institutions of police and land revenue. The thana and patwar are the means of dispensing goods and services in a system built on patronage. If you truly want to transform the polity from one run on patronage to one committed to service delivery, you would need to address both the demand and the supply ends of patronage. The demand is generated by the sense of entitlement of those who emerge victorious in the election. And the supply is provided by the thana and patwar that are conditioned to bend in the direction that the wind blows.
If the Sharifs are truly committed to instilling change, they will need to start by curbing the sense of entitlement of victorious parliamentarians, their friends and supporters. While it must be ensured that policies introduced by elected members of the executive are not frustrated by red tape, the sense that democracy should render the bureaucracy feeble is a misnomer. There can be no service delivery based on merit until the public office-holder – elected or appointed – has the capacity and autonomy to perform without considerations of fear or favour. And that requires strengthening and not weakening the administrative structure of the state.
Once the DSP has the financial and administrative capacity to discharge his obligations and the autonomy to say no even to the prime minister if asked to bend the rules or exercise discretion based on extraneous considerations, and the abuse of such autonomy is checked by a system of accountability that is not motivated by partisan considerations or bruised egos of the power elite, the thana culture will simply wither away. There is an urgent need for key decision-makers in this new government to understand that corruption and ill-will aside, the service delivery institutions of the state are now simply devoid of capacity and need major overhaul.
With Khawaja Asif, Ishaq Dar, Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, Khurram Dastagir and Ahsan Iqbal, to name a few, the PML-N has an upright and motivated team to grapple with key challenges confronting Pakistan. The requirement then is to attract non-flattering straight-talking professional experts to assist the political team in formulating the right policies. But the success of the political and professional team will depend on ethos that the Sharifs nurture around them within which policymaking and its implementation will take place. Putting together a team is easy. Creating space for advisers to speak truth to power and heeding such advice is the hard part. And that will determine whether or not Mr Sharif is a changed man.
Email: sattar@post.harvard.edu