PUNJAB’S legislative business rarely makes it to the headlines for the right reasons and this time around it is no different. In the last week of June, the assembly passed a bill allowing a committee of the assembly to penalise any bureaucrat for a breach of privilege of the House, any of its committees or a member.

Unanimously passed by the parties which are usually at loggerheads at the centre and in talk shows, media reports say the bill allows assembly members to form a judicial committee of the assembly to sentence bureaucrats after establishing that the privilege of the legislature or a member has been breached. The original bill gave powers to the people’s representatives to punish both bureaucrats and journalists but then the parliamentarians were generous enough to let the media off the hook. The bureaucrats weren’t that lucky.

They got a bit of a reprieve but the governor refused to sign the bill and sent it back to the assembly — to no avail. The assembly passed it again. Once again it was supported by all the parties. The speaker then made it clear that it no longer required the governor’s assent to become law. According to a report in this paper, he added, “The bureaucrats will fall in line once a couple of precedents are set.”

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He is said to have also told the parliamentarians to record phone conversations while speaking to district commissioners “so that the House could see the attitude of the bureaucracy”, says the report. Considering the general perception about Parvez Elahi as a ‘mature’ and ‘sensible’ politician, his intemperate remarks are perplexing. Perhaps he was simply playing to the aisles in the assembly?

Something is lacking in the larger system if the entire administrative machinery is in upheaval.

But I digress. To return to the recently passed law, a former bureaucrat describes it as one that gives parliamentarians the right to act as judge and jury.

Undoubtedly, this matter will not end here; there is sure to be more to come but in the meantime, it has highlighted yet again, the troubled relationship between the bureaucracy and politicians in Punjab, which has rarely been out of the news in the three years of the PTI government in that province.

Chief secretaries and police chiefs have been appointed and removed at a mind-boggling pace; at the last count, five IGs have been posted in and out and a sixth is in place. In Lahore, the post of commissioner has seen nearly as many incumbents; those working in other positions have also experienced similarly shifting fortunes. In a story published in The News in March, Ansar Abbasi reported 14 assistant commissioners had been transferred from an area in Bhakkar district since the PTI took over in Punjab.

Indeed, there has been considerable coverage of political interference and the quick transfer and postings. The reasons are many — a weak chief minister whose position is so insecure that he is on a constant quest to accommodate the constituency demands of party colleagues and allies, and pressure from the prime minister who at one stage was convinced he could run the province through remote control. Add to the mix an active governor, and the bureaucracy has been the collateral damage, so to speak.

Tasneem Noorani, in one of his pieces in Dawn, spoke of the bureaucracy being under pressure from four to five different directions.

This is in sharp contrast to the previous regime where the one-man show of Shehbaz Sharif dominated the province and resulted in a very different model of governance, in which it seemed the bureaucracy answered only to him. But the difference is not just of an individual — in some ways — but also of the context in which the individual is placed.

Sharif junior is known to be a micro-manager but he was able to get away with it because of the comfortable majority the PML-N government tends to enjoy in Punjab and because his close relationship with the prime minister/ party head didn’t allow space to anyone to undermine him. (Contrast this with his current situation where the family’s inner politics means that there have been multiple occasions when his decisions have been questioned.)

Earlier, says Sameen Mohsin, who has written extensively on the bureaucracy, the Chaudhries allowed the most delegation, but not necessarily due to choice. She argues that with the military in power and an active NAB and National Reconstruction Bureau, they preferred to ‘stay in lane’ and left much of the governance to the senior bureaucracy, as junior partners to the uniformed ones. (Perhaps Elahi’s most recent statements indicate his uncensored views on the bureaucracy which he kept in check when in power.)

Perhaps a stronger individual than Usman Buzdar would bring some stability to the administration but not much because the successor would continue to be under pressure from Imran Khan, the coalition government and the fractious party, which will never be happy with any one in charge of the biggest and most contested province.

More importantly, the question to be asked — for the sake of a stable system — is: how can the larger executive system be protected from the pressures of a political system, be it in terms of a micro-manager or a weakling forever trying to ward off threats? The PTI’s poor choices and skills aside, something is lacking in the larger system if the entire administrative machinery is in upheaval with a change of chief minister or a stable versus coalition government. Is devolution of power in the shape of local government the answer, even though it will bring its own share of upheaval, as the Musharraf regime showed? And how will it be allowed to continue?

As an aside, it is worth considering why the laws passed with consensus in Punjab tend to be so controversial. The law about the bureaucracy is just the latest example. Last year, the parliamentarians came together to ensure that all the Islamic content of textbooks would have to be submitted to an ulema board by the Punjab Curriculum and Textbook Board, which is one reason the implementation of the Single National Curriculum has become such a headache. Earlier in 2019, they forgot their nazaryati (ideological) differences to give themselves a hefty salary raise.

The writer is a journalist.

Published in Dawn, August 10th, 2021