Shahbaz role model for other CMs: Dr Ishrat

LAHORE: “Chief Minister Punjab Shahbaz Sharif became the role model for the Chief Ministers of other provinces — a hard act to follow,” writes award-winning economist and former governor State Bank of Pakistan Dr Ishrat Hussain in his newly-launched book “Governing the Ungovernable”.

Shahbaz was the chief guest at the book-launching ceremony at the CM Minister House on Saturday.

The book takes an analytical and reformatory approach while identifying the challenges associated with finding a perfect recipe for good governance in Pakistan. In the book, Dr Ishrat scrutinises the governance phenomenon on federal level while running a comparative analysis of performance of the four provinces.

“The performance of the Punjab government in many respects is much superior to that of other provinces and it can be attributed to strong exemplary leadership, but its sustainability will only be assured if its institutional infrastructure is also strengthened,” rules the former State Bank governor who has also received Hilal-e-Imtiaz for his services.

Dr Ishrat attributes this superior performance of Punjab and the popularity of PML-N to Shahbaz, saying, “The victory of the PML-N in the 2013 general elections is largely attributed to the relatively good performance of Mian Shahbaz Sharif in Punjab during the 2008-13 period. He carried out far-reaching reforms across a broad spectrum of public services: education, health, roads and infrastructure, public transport, solid waste disposal, and in the recent years, in the energy sector.”

To stress his narrative, he in his book says, “The record time in which power generating plants were constructed and commissioned have drawn praise and commendation from leaders of China and Turkey. There were very few reports of any corruption when billions of dollars worth of contracts were awarded. His commitment to get things done was steadfast.

Although his style of leadership was too personality-driven rather than a systematic plan of institution-building, he put in place some elements of good governance. Secretaries and heads of the corporations were selected on the basis of past performance and reputation as doers and without hesitation replaced if they fell short of his expectations.

Teachers were recruited on pure merit. Technology was used to bring about transparency, efficiency, and obtain citizen feedback. Although he did not have time to devote to institutional restructuring, he brought about innovation in the public sector by forming corporate entities for various services mimicking the private sector.”

Addressing the function, the chief minister described his participation in the book-launching ceremony an honour and matter of immense pleasure.

He said Dr Ishrat had written a wonderful book on the situation, issues and challenges face by the country. In 1990s, Pakistan was ahead of many neighbouring countries in terms of economic growth, the chief minister said and reminded the audience that South Korea made progress by adopting Pakistan’s five-year development plan.

“India, Bangladesh and China are also far ahead of us today,” he said, adding, “We have to figure out the reason how these countries have moved ahead of Pakistan despite having the same conditions.”

Shahbaz said freedom was meaningless in the absence of economic freedom as no one could command the economically strong nations.

“We have to march forward by relying on our own resources stand on our feet to fulfil the goals of establishment of Pakistan. But this destination cannot be achieved by tactics but through practical hard work and collective efforts,” said the chief minister.

He stressed the need for an economic and social justice system that ensures equal opportunities to progress, fair distribution of resources and provides basic facilities to everyone.

The chief minister said in order to bring peace and prosperity to the country and to replace despair with happiness, there was a dire need to reduce the gap between the rich and the poor.

He said corruption cases had surfaced in India, Bangladesh and other countries too but unfortunately only Pakistan was lagging behind on the road of progress despite having a similar state of affairs.

Shahbaz termed human resource development a prerequisite to achieve development goals and called for effective check and balance on politicians, bureaucracy and institutions.

He said the development process could be expedited by transferring powers to the lower level and local governments could play an effective role to achieve the objective. But no heed was paid on the annual audit of these institutions by the Musharraf regime, Shahbaz said, adding that the incumbent government took steps to strengthen and bring the transparency in the local governments.

Speaking on the occasion, Dr Ishrat said Shahbaz had improved the system through good governance and his plans for education, health, transport, solid waste management, infrastructure, energy and other sectors were ideal.