If the sheer number of accountability offices were proof of justice, Pakistan might look like one of the best-governed countries in the world.
From the Wafaqi Mohtasib to FOSPAH, from the Federal Tax Ombudsman to a host of provincial mohtasib, we have no shortage of ‘citizen-friendly’ grievance bodies. On paper, they promise speed, accessibility and fairness. In reality, they are the debris of donor-driven reform packages – institutions imported wholesale from abroad, bolted onto our system without much thought for whether they would work here.
These offices weren’t born out of local debate that suggested this approach to fix Pakistan’s broken justice system. They were given to us as part of a governance ‘toolkit’ pushed by the UNDP, World Bank and other aid agencies from the 1980s onwards. As always they wanted to bypass the poorly functioning colonial remnant of clogged courts and slow bureaucracies with independent ombudsmen, an agency copied from the Scandinavian countries where presumably resolved complaints quickly. The context and culture and the extant colonial structures did not matter.
Donors ticked the ‘institution-building’ box; governments claimed reform; retired officials got a new job opportunity while budgets expanded. Meanwhile, the status quo was further entrenched. Nobody paused to ask whether these bodies fit our legal architecture or whether they could ever deliver the justice they promised.
Four decades later, the answer is painfully clear. We have built a sprawling patchwork of overlapping mandates and jurisdictions. These bodies don’t complement the courts or regulators; but compete with them. Instead of streamlining justice, they have created a parallel system.
And they have weaponised. People now ‘forum shop’, moving from one ombudsman or tribunal to another, or hopping between commissions and tribunals and judges until they find someone willing to rule in their favor. The process can be drawn out deliberately to exhaust opponents or tarnish reputations. This is procedural gamesmanship, wrapped in donor-speak about access and empowerment.
The decisions often are baffling. FOSPAH, the Federal Ombudsman for Protection Against Harassment, has issued penalties in harassment cases without giving the accused a full hearing or access to the record, only for courts to overturn the rulings years later. Most decisions are not published and are not subject to internal or external review. There has bn ever been an evaluation, or any attempt to learn from past mistakes.
What makes these penalties especially troubling is that there is no statutory or procedural framework for substantiating fines or linking them to actual damages. Judicial systems have evolved to a clear system of penalties where the judge needs to determine and show that penalties match the damage caused and are not the whims of judges. Such penalties must also be proportionate to proven harm – supported by evidence, quantified losses or expert valuation – and the reasoning must be recorded so it can survive appeal.
The parallel system seems to have no clear guardrails. Amounts seem plucked from thin air: a lightly substantiated case might trigger a multi-million-rupee penalty, while a serious, well-documented grievance could end in a token award. Even the odd practice of splitting fines – half to the complainant, half to the government treasury – has no obvious statutory basis. This is not deterrence; it is arbitrary power.
Appointments to these important quasi-judicial systems with much power seem to be arbitrary, mostly relying on the network of retirees or NGOs. This is no real open, merit-based competition. Often, these posts go to retired bureaucrats or judges, parachuted into comfortable sinecures with little public scrutiny. Once in office, they operate in near-total obscurity. Annual reports, if they exist, read more like glossy donor brochures than serious audits.
All legal systems depend on case law that establishes precedents and forces judges to confront the logic of their predecessors. Case law also allows a system of peer review of judges through the ages and allow the rest of us to see the legal and judicial maturity of a judge. But the parallel legal system is not compelled to provide their judgements for others’ scrutiny.
Without published rulings, there is no jurisprudence, no precedent, no body of learning for others to draw on. Every case starts from scratch. In theory, the ombudsman is supposed to be a guardian against maladministration, rights and now m any other Here they are a black-box complaint handler – issuing rulings that can’t be studied, compared or improved.
Meanwhile, donors have more such institutions to offer jobs for retirees and others. They are not pointing out that the proliferation of quasi-judicial bodies has drawn attention and resources away from fixing the judiciary, professionalising the bureaucracy and strengthening regulators.
This is the paradox of donor-led reform. Institutions that work in Stockholm or Ottawa cannot simply be air-dropped into Islamabad only to bypass the broken colonial system and expect to improve governance to international standards.
If justice is to mean anything, we need to stop accepting these imported quick fixes. Audit and evaluate the ombudsmen we already have. Publish their rulings. Take arbitrariness out of their work. Develop clear guidelines for punishments and fines. Make appointments transparent and merit based. Until that happens, these offices will remain a parallel system that extends arbitrary colonial privilege with little justice.
The writer is a former deputy chairman of the Planning Commission. He tweets/posts @Nadeemhaque and his Youtube account is @SIAlytics
