Without the 'clean' commission

Rahimullah Yusufzai

More than 20 percent of Pakistan's landmass is under water and the rest could also drown under the weight of foreign loans, food shortages and diseases caused by the floods and social unrest. The colossal losses that the country has suffered and the prospect of 20 million angry flood victims looking to the government for help should have brought the politicians to their senses and prompted them to stop doing politics on the issue of collection and use of flood relief funds. As this hasn't happened, one will have to worry about the consequences.

It is unfortunate that at this challenging time Pakistan is being administered by a faltering government whose stalwarts lack credibility. We have an accidental president with a tainted past who sees nothing wrong in breaking solemn promises. He is calculating, though, and capable of keeping in good humour most of his supporters and political allies and deftly sidestepping his opponents. With the discredited President Asif Ali Zardari at the helm of affairs, there is little hope that Pakistan would be out of the woods any time soon. Rather, the country could sink further, even though the floodwaters will hopefully recede in the days to come.

To add to Pakistan's misfortune, we have a prime minister who is accountable to the president, instead of parliament. Being handpicked and largely unequal to the task, he failed to outgrow his limitations even after getting empowered by the 18th Amendment. Prime Minister Syed Yusuf Raza Gilani's most recent loss of face was in full display to the nation when he backed out after publicly agreeing with PML-N leader Nawaz Sharif on the need to set up an independent commission comprising reputed and trustworthy Pakistanis to collect, spend and manage flood-relief funds. As expected, the president put his foot down by making sure that his trusted men in the cabinet objected to Nawaz Sharif's proposal for the setting up the "clean" commission. The next step was to oppose the move by mobilising the provincial governments, two of which, in Sindh and Balochistan, are run by PPP-led coalition governments, and the third, in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, is headed by the ANP, which is allied to President Zardari.

In place of a credible and apolitical commission, an oversight council is being set up with nominees proposed by the federal and provincial governments. The council will be a toothless body comprising persons beholden to the ruling political parties and, therefore, unable to gain the trust of most Pakistanis. The establishment of the "clean" commission would have benefited the ruling PPP and its allies and enabled them to sidetrack the issue of credibility. The commission would have shared the government's burden of collecting and spending funds and enabled it to avoid the inevitable accusations of misuse of money. This opportunity is now lost and the government should be ready to face the consequences, because there is little hope that the ruling elite will be able to properly, and honestly, handle the huge challenge of rehabilitating the 20 million flood victims and rebuilding the damaged infrastructure of roads, bridges and irrigation channels.

Prime Minister Gilani's image was further harmed when his information minister, Qamaruzzaman Kaira, argued that the decision to set up the commission was taken by just two persons, meaning Gilani and Nawaz Sharif, and not by other stakeholders, such as the provincial governments and parties making up the ruling coalition. The prime minister was described as a "person," instead of the head of the government and chief executive of the country. Nawaz Sharif also isn't just a person as he is leader of the second-largest political party in parliament, and according to public opinion surveys the most popular politician in the country.

If his own party leaders treat him in this manner, Gilani cannot hope to enjoy respect from others. Also, it is time he stops making policy decisions without first getting clearance from Zardari, who hasn't given up the PPP co-chairmanship even after becoming president. Overstepping his mandate has landed Gilani in trouble time and again after being vetoed by the president. Nawaz Sharif will also have to put an end to his repeated attempts to do things together with the president and the prime minister, because every failed effort on his part makes him look naïve. Or is he doing all this deliberately to expose the PPP leadership as being untrustworthy?

The provincial governments also don't inspire much hope. The Sindh government is an uneasy coalition of the PPP and the MQM, though the ANP, with two seats in the assembly, is also part of the ruling alliance. There is a love-hate relationship between the PPP and the MQM, and the latter demands and extracts a price whenever its interests are threatened. The sight of MQM and ANP members fighting turf wars in Karachi doesn't give you an idea that they are part of a coalition government. Mostly daily-wage-earners get killed in the violence as they have to go out and find work. The death of around 114 innocent people in the wake of MQM MPA Raza Haider's assassination should have been a sufficient reason for the Sindh government to be sent packing, but there cannot be any accountability when ruling parties patronise killers and maintain death squads.

Insurgency-plagued Balochistan is a hopeless case in terms of its unwieldy, patronage-based government made up of all 63 MPAs except one, Sardar Yar Mohammad Rind, who too would have been sitting on the treasury benches if he wasn't running a tribal feud with Chief Minister Nawab Aslam Raisani.

The ANP-led Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government was adjudged the most corrupt in Pakistan by Transparency International, and it hasn't done much since then to clear its image and prove its detractors wrong. There could be other and more deserving candidates among the provincial governments for this badge of dishonour, but one has to mention that the perception of the government of Chief Minister Ameer Haider Hoti being corrupt is strong and widespread. It is an open secret that most postings and transfers, appointments and awarding of contracts cannot happen unless money changes hands.

The Punjab government headed by the PML-N is benefiting from the good reputation of Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif due to his previous stint in office, and also due to a largely favourable media. The Sharifs seem to have changed after staying in the political wilderness for long and their principles-based politics is paying them dividends. But the Punjab government hasn't delivered in terms of providing better law and order to people, checking police excesses and improving the lot of the dispossessed. In the recent flood crisis also, the provincial government has been charged with failure to issue timely warnings and launch quick rescue and relief efforts.

This is the state of affairs in Pakistan when it is confronted with the gigantic task of rehabilitating those deprived of livelihoods and life savings. The chaos is evident in the privatisation of the relief effort, as groups and individuals go about their separate ways collecting donations and delivering one-time food and non-food assistance to the flood victims. There is often duplication in getting supplies to the same people and localities due to mismanagement and in the absence of an organised system.

The government, the armed forces, political parties, religious charities, media groups, non-governmental organisations and individuals are doing a tremendous job, but this good work ought to be done under a centralised system and on a sustained basis. Many among them will quit after a while, but the more important task of rehabilitation and reconstruction will come later and require huge funds. Only a government could handle this task, and it cannot be bypassed even if it isn't dependable. The absence of the "clean" commission would be felt in this situation as substantial foreign funds are becoming available after initial hesitance by the donors and the honest spending of this money is going to be a challenge in view of the competing claims by provinces, regions, ethnic groups and, more importantly, the flood victims. Any mishandling of this task could create more problems than those already facing Pakistan.

The writer is resident editor of The News in Peshawar. Email: rahim yusufzai@yahoo.com