NOVEMBER 14, 2005 was a day of interesting revelations regarding the Punjab assembly. We learned, for instance, that a day’s meeting of a standing committee costs the public exchequer about 100,000 rupees. We learned also that the assembly’s standing committee on “Revenue, Relief, and Consolidation” had been seized of a bill to regulate private money lending, for one and a half years.

The mover, Ms Humaira Shahid (PML-Q) reported that the committee had met 26 times, costing the public Rs 2.6 million rupees, during this period of 18 months without making any headway on her bill. Indeed, it had transacted no business in any of these 26 meetings, because it never had five members in attendance at the same time to make the quorum. Whenever a fifth member walked into the committee room, one of the sitting four walked out in order to leave those in attendance short of a quorum once again. She lamented that if the government did not want her bill to get anywhere, she could be so advised, and she would withdraw it. But word to that effect had not been conveyed to her.

It was then the committee that must be blamed. Ms Humaira Shahid believed its members held meetings to collect their allowances but did not want to do the work for which they had professedly come. Another MPA, Mr Samiullah Khan of the PPP, had a similar grievance: his bill to allow assembly members to visit police stations in their respective constituencies had been with a standing committee for two years.

In its work ethic and modus operandi the National Assembly of Pakistan is no different from the provincial assemblies. The following presentation focuses on the workings of its standing committees and is based on its “Rules of Procedure and Conduct of Business” (1992).

In addition to committees concerned with housekeeping (e.g., library) and those of government-wide jurisdiction (e.g., public accounts), the National Assembly has established a standing committee for each ministry or division. It may consist of as many as 17 members elected by the Assembly, and it includes the concerned minister as an ex officio member. It is expected to examine bills and other matters relating to its ministry that may be referred to it by the Assembly or the speaker and submit its findings as to their merits. Unless required otherwise, it should submit its report within 30 days of the referral. If the committee does not file its report within the prescribed period of time, the Assembly may proceed with the bill in question without waiting for it.

In addition to the matters specifically referred to it, the committee may, acting on its own initiative, examine rules, policies, administration, and expenditures of the ministry in its jurisdiction. It may summon witnesses and call for documents relevant to its inquiry. These calls go out under the signatures of the Assembly’s secretary general.

A standing committee elects its own chairman who will normally designate the days and time of its meetings. One-fourth of its membership constitutes the quorum. Issues are settled by majority vote of those present. Rules of the Senate do require representation of the opposition parties on its standing committees, but I have not found the same requirement in the National Assembly’s rules of business. In any case, it is to be noted that the ruling party or coalition would necessarily have a majority in each committee.

It is not entirely clear what a committee report accomplishes. The Assembly may take it “into consideration,” and possibly adopt it. Even though the committee’s recommendations, if any, are not binding upon the government, I imagine that if the report relates to a bill, it has been taken up with the sponsoring ministry and the bill has been revised to some extent before its presentation to the Assembly.

The Assembly has standing committees other than the ones that are ministry-specific. Two of them are noteworthy, namely, the Public Accounts Committee (PAC), and the Committee on Rules of Procedures and Privileges. Of these PAC would seem to be the more active. It examines the government’s accounts for a given fiscal year to see that the moneys disbursed had been authorized for the purposes to which they were applied. To this end it reviews the report of the auditor general of Pakistan for the year in question. If the money spent on any service exceeds the amount the Assembly had appropriated for it, the committee is to examine the circumstances leading to that excess and make such recommendations as it may deem fit.

I doubt that the committee on procedure and privileges does much by way of rewriting the Assembly’s rules of business. But individual members’ allegations of breach of their privilege are periodically referred to it. I must confess I have never seen reports of its disposition of these allegations. In fact, I have never seen references in the media to the reports of any standing committee other than those of PAC.

Senators and MNAs, attending “briefing sessions” organized by the Pakistan Institute of Legislative Development (May 17, 2004 and May 8, 2005), agreed that parliamentary committees in Pakistan did not do significant work. The rules authorized them to oversee the functioning of their respective ministries, but they did not have the will to perform this role. Nor were they set up to perform it. Their chairmen were given special allowances, and each of them was given an office, a private secretary, a personal assistant, and a chauffeur-driven car but no computer, internet access, fax machine, photocopier, printers; no research or investigative staff, and no funds to hire outside consultants or experts. Unlike the practice in Great Britain and India, parliamentary committees in Pakistan had no participation in the budget process.

In Great Britain, India, and many other democracies, the speaker appoints members of parliamentary committees, including persons from the opposition parties in proportion to their numbers in the house. In the cooler, less fractious, and private environment of the committee room the government side can accommodate the opposition’s advice away from the public view and without loss of face. The two sides are thus able to work together in a fashion that would not be possible on the floor of the house.

Modern legislation requires considerable time and expertise if it is to be done intelligently. Legislatures, acting on their own, cannot cope with the work involved. Committees are a way of dividing work and parcelling out responsibility. They function as “little legislatures,” examine the pros and cons of proposed legislation, sharpen the issues, and state the lawmaker’s intent in suitable language. They do much of the work that would otherwise have to be done on the floor of the house. The house can take up the bill as it has emerged from the concerned committee and move with it fairly expeditiously. This is how the committee system in the United States Congress works.

But even in parliamentary systems where the powers are fused, not separated, and where the executive is a part of the legislature, committees do a lot of the work I have just described. The House of Commons in Great Britain will occasionally sit as a “committee of the whole,” but much of its deliberative work is done in its standing committees. They examine their assigned ministry’s budget proposals item by item and its bills clause by clause when, after the second reading, they reach the “committee stage.” The same may be said of the Lok Sabha’s standing committees in India, albeit, to a lesser degree.

Parliamentary committees in Pakistan were almost entirely inactive until the National Assembly adopted new rules of business in 1992. But as we have seen above they are still not taken seriously. There is often inordinate delay in setting them up. For instance, the latest elections to the National Assembly were held towards the end of 2002, but committees were not put in place until early in 2004. Quite often referral of bills to committees is evaded by a successful motion to “suspend the rules,” which dispenses with the requirement of referral. As often bills, especially those moved by private members, are sent to committees in the expectation that they will get buried there and never heard of again.

Parliamentary committees in Pakistan are the way they are because nobody in the government, or even in the opposition, thinks much of the legislative function. Talk of the “sovereignty” of parliament is irrelevant because those who speak of it either do not really believe in it or do not know what it means. Their actual conduct in the assemblies makes it abundantly clear that they have no respect or regard for the institution. The government, on its part, treats the legislature as if it were a superfluous appendix to the body politic. Consider two recent incidents.

Just a day or two before the National Assembly was to begin its fourth year, General Pervez Musharraf promulgated an ordinance to provide for the appointment of two deputy chairmen in the National Accountability Bureau. This agency has done without a deputy for several years and it could have gone on just as well for a few more days until the National Assembly passed a bill to give it the additional staff it had come to need. Why then the ordinance? The answer would have to be that the general simply did not want to give the Assembly the occasion to debate NAB’s performance.

On December 5 the Sindh provincial assembly, which had been in session, was prorogued. The next day the governor issued an ordinance that would change the rules governing the election of nazims and naib-nazims, and it would authorize the provincial chief minister to suspend or set aside a nazim’s determinations (orders). These were major systemic changes that should have come about through legislative deliberation. The governor’s ordinance was thus an act of high-handedness, conveying utter indifference to normal legislative process and contempt for the assembly as an institution.

The writer is professor emeritus of political science at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, US E-mail: anwarsyed@cox.net

WITHIN days of assuming power in October 1999, General Pervez Musharraf promised to the nation, inter alia, that he would rid the state institutions of politics and conduct expeditious and impartial accountability. The message intended for public servants was simply that if in discharging their duty they did not act in accordance with the law but under political pressure they would be promptly punished.

This principle has failed to take hold in six years. In fact, the contrary has happened. Public servants are more likely to be punished if they disregard or defy orders coming from political quarters though they may be against the law as well as propriety.

The first and foremost requirement for public institutions to be free from politics is that selection and recruitment for the parts should be through independent commissions or committees. This principle has been all but abandoned over the years and this regime has shown no inclination to reinstate it. It is particularly true of the provincial, and now also of the district, governments where most services are performed and public dealings take place.

The appointments in the government departments, be it of teachers or policemen, of engineers or doctors, are now made, with rare exceptions, at the behest of ministers, nazims or legislators. In fact, it is now an accepted practice to parcel out job quotas to them. The officials only sign the appointment letters. Quite obviously, an institution run by political nominees, even if they happen to be qualified and competent, cannot be free from politics nor even-handed in dealings with the people. It is not a question of politics alone but a cause of deteriorating standards of education, health, law and order and of all other public services. Mediocrity has always been a hallmark of government, it has now touched a low end.

A poignant illustration of this phenomenon has been reported from Khairpur. There some candidates selected against advertised posts of teachers after tests and interviews have threatened to set themselves alight if they are replaced by the relatives of the nazims of the ruling party who had not even applied, much less competed, for the job. That, the selected candidates allege, is being done with the connivance of some corrupt officials.

This instance apart, mystery generally surrounds the timing and procedure for recruitment in all government departments. The stock answer is a ban on recruitment although the number of vacancies in Sindh alone according to the chief minister is 50,000. The general suspicion nevertheless persists that appointments are being made through the backdoor.

The least that the jobless millions of the country expect is that they should be informed through public announcements when they can apply and compete. If they are cheated out of the process, despite their merit, as the Khairpur teachers allege they have been, it would be a contingency with which they shall have to contend later.

The worry is that government posts as a rule, are dished out as a favour or bribe and are not given on the basis of merit. More disgusting, however, is that the politicians, have convinced themselves that there is nothing immoral or unjust in giving government jobs to their relatives or friends to advance their own political interests. This attitude is turning the country into a mediaeval fiefdom. In a meritocracy, the unemployed have only themselves to blame. In a system where merit is disregarded, the talented men either migrate or become rebels. Either way it is a bad deal for the country.

The disdain for merit cuts across party lines. It has shown itself in a sense of general satisfaction and glee on the acquittal of Benazir Bhutto by an accountability court of the charge of making 1,393 illegal appointments in the PIA when she was the prime minister. The reaction even of the Sindh chief minister to Ms Bhutto’s acquittal (who otherwise may wish her continued exile or prison) was that by giving jobs she committed no crime. If it is a crime almost every politician would be guilty of it.

It may disappoint the chief minister and others who look forward to a job bonanza that Judge Parkash Lal Ambwani has acquitted Ms Bhutto not because she, as prime minister, had the right to appoint anyone she liked in the national airline but because he found no evidence directly linking her with the appointment orders that were communicated to the PIA management by the prime minister’s secretariat. Her acquittal doesn’t mean that appointments made on political grounds in violation of the rules of an organization would always be legal or proper.

The prime minister thus would do well to inform the ministers, nazims and their large and growing power retinues that ordering appointments in violation of the rules is illegal. And to drive the point home he should arraign some among them who commit this illegality before the accountability court. The prime minister should also ensure that the rules and procedure for appointments on a competitive basis at all levels are laid down and followed in all departments.

Favouritism and nepotism have come to form the bedrock of our politics, which in turn is steeped in the culture of caste and clan. Its influence can be seen not only in government jobs but also on parliamentary and diplomatic assignments. Just imagine, most women in the parliament elected against the seats reserved for them are close relatives of the male legislators who elected them. The only argument that can be persuasively made against this all pervasive culture is that it rendered made the country almost ungovernable.

The case against Benazir Bhutto and some others belonging to her secretariat or the airlines for making illegal appointments was instituted in May 15, 1997. It was decided eight and a half years later — on November 30, 2005. So much for Musharraf’s promise of making accountability expeditious. About its impartiality all that can be said is that no one in his government, or supporting him, has been made to face it so far.