KARACHI: The most visible performance during the first 100 days of every new government in Pakistan, whether it is a provincial or the federal government, appears to be confined to reshuffling of the bureaucracy in almost every department.

Transfers and postings are accompanied by appointments of loyalists as a reward for their support in elections – and quite often in exile of leaders. That is why if one visits a sitting minister’s office, one cannot help noticing a huge crowd surrounding the minister.

Most of them come from far-off places to meet the minister with applications either for a job for a kin or for someone’s transfer orders to a lucrative post.

This reshuffling process had built so much pressure on Chief Minister Syed Qaim Ali Shah that he had to declare a ban on transfers and postings only to issue fresh orders for more transfers and postings under political pressure.

This phenomenon, it must be noted, is not only prevalent only in our country, it is a also common practice in almost every third-world country. Supporters of the ousted government and its cronies in the bureaucracy, feeling uneasy in the new setup, complain of foul play.

They forget that most of them had also made their way to the selective post through the same route.

This practice, if one goes through the history of democratic governments, is an old one, followed even in the United States. During President Andrew Jackson’s eight years’ in office about one-fifth of officeholders were replaced. Rather aptly, this practice is known as “the spoils system.”

According to the US History Encyclopaedia: “The ‘spoils system’ of distributing government jobs as reward for political services takes its name from an 1832 speech by the Democratic Senator William L. Marcy of New York. Defending President Andrew Jackson’s partisan dismissals from office, Marcy avowed that he and his fellows saw nothing wrong in the rule, that to the victor belong the spoils of the enemy”.

Jackson accused the federal establishment of opposing his election in the 1820s. He proclaimed a policy of “rotation in office” to curb official arrogance and corruption and democratise opportunities for public service.

Opponents condemned Jackson for introducing political “proscription” but soon learned to follow his example. By the 1840s both Jackson’s Democrats and opposing Whigs routinely wielded patronage to inspire and discipline party workers. Partisan removals grew ever more extensive, reaching down from Washington bureau chiefs and clerks to land and customs and territorial officials to village postmasters. Thousands of eager supplicants besieged each new administration, making the redistribution of offices every four years a major undertaking.

The system was entrenched by 1850s. However, the assassination of President James Garfield by a disappointed office-seeker led to the passage of the Pendleton Civil Service Act in 1883, which laid the foundation of a merit system of employment for certain classes of federal employees under the supervision of bipartisan civil service commission and banned the common practice of rewarding office-holders in return for contributions to party coffers.

With the passage of time, largely spoils system has been replaced with career bureaucracy. The political patronage survives to a very limited number of postings at the top in federal as well as state and municipal appointments.

In Pakistan for the first time it came to the fore with the introduction of what was described as “lateral entry” into the bureaucracy during the 1970s in the first PPP government after the fall of Dhaka.

But despite the fact that not only parties but even during the military regimes, which had ruled the country in between the democratic setups, had been pursuing the spoils system, the induction of outsiders in the bureaucracy or their appointments over their heads as supervisors had been resented not only by the bureaucracy but also by political parties outside the fold of the ruling regimes.

According to a Grade-21 officer, who did not like to be named, this system not only politicised the bureaucracy but also marred good governance. Now except for a few officers, the government machinery appears to be keen to link themselves with one or another political force in the country.

“It would be better if the government formally notified the positions and ranks where such appointments could be made by the incoming government, which would be vacated with a change of administration”, he suggested, pointing out that in the absence of such a notification those inducted by the past government are supposed to be made part of the bureaucracy and if the incoming government tried to remove them, it becomes a matter of victimisation. As a result, the size of the bureaucracy goes on increasing, adding to the burden of non-productive expenditures of the government, leaving very little resources for development of the social sector.