Parties and governments

ISSUES, salient at one time, have a way of receding temporarily and then returning to haunt us. The issue I propose to discuss today belongs to that category.

Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain, head of PML (Q), asserted a few months ago that “the government will be subservient to the party.” He is the principal “wheeler-dealer” in his party, and was indeed foremost among those who put it together. He did not become the prime minister, probably because the higher powers decided that it would be more expedient if someone other than a Punjabi occupied that post.

Mir Zafarullah Khan Jamali turned out to be the man they were looking for, even though he was not particularly accomplished as a politician. The least he could now do was to take counsel from the party chief on matters with regard to which he had been left untutored by Gen Musharraf. This is how Shujaat Hussain would appear to have reasoned.

His idea is not novel or weird. Initially, the PML constitution provided that a person serving as the country’s prime minister could not, at the same time, be president of the party. This was probably done to avoid giving an individual, howsoever competent, excessive power and/or responsibility. Accordingly, Chaudhry Khaliq-uz-Zaman, and not Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan, was elected the PML president.

This arrangement did not work. Liaquat Ali Khan had been the Quaid-i-Azam’s deputy during the struggle for independence while Chaudhry Khaliq-uz-Zaman stood at a lower rung, eminent at the provincial, rather than the national, level. Yet, having taken an office that might be regarded as comparable to the one the Quaid-i-Azam used to have, Chaudhry Sahib allowed himself to believe that he should have a say in the formulation of the federal government’s policies and decisions.

Khaliq-uz-Zaman’s attempts at self-assertion were not well received in the prime minister’s office. Liaquat Ali Khan gathered support in the PML council to oust him and to amend the party’s constitution so as to allow the prime minister to serve as party president as well. He, thereupon, occupied both offices. Following his assassination in October 1951, Khawaja Nazim-ud-Din did the same. After his dismissal from the prime minister’s post, Khwaja Sahib tried to hold on to the party post for a time but eventually yielded to Mohammad Ali Bogra, the next prime minister.

This pattern broke when Chaudhry Mohammad Ali declined the party office. But note that by this time the PML, having been routed in East Pakistan, no longer commanded a majority in the National Assembly with the result that its headship became inconsequential.

Ayub Khan served both as President of Pakistan and as president of his own faction of PML (Convention). Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Mohammad Khan Junejo, and later Benazir Bhutto occupied the top government and party offices simultaneously. Upon becoming prime minister, Nawaz Sharif would not countenance Mr Junejo as president of PML, broke up the party, and assumed the presidentship of his own faction.

Looking at parties other than PML, we see that the record is mixed. H.S. Suhrawardy was prime minister at the same time that he was president of the Awami League. At the provincial level, Mian Abdul Bari was president of the Punjab Muslim League for a year or two following independence while Nawab Mamdot was chief minister. In the NWFP Abdul Qayyum Khan, having chased out the Pir Sahib of Manki Sharif, held both offices. More recently (1972-73), Mufti Mahmood remained president of the JUI even as he served as chief minister of the NWFP in a government formed in coalition with the Awami National Party (ANP). But the head of ANP at the time, Abdul Wali Khan, held no government office.

During his long haul as prime minister of India, Jawaharlal Nehru exercised a great deal of influence in the affairs of the Congress party, but he let others serve as its president. These others did not claim authority to dictate policies to the prime minister. As far as I know, the situation is about the same in most other parliamentary systems.

What is the proper function of political parties? First and foremost, they manage elections and thus enable democratic governments to come into being. When they do actually function on the ground, instead of existing only in the records of the Election Commission, they set up inter-connected networks of organization at the local, district, provincial, and national levels.

They enrol members, recruit workers, and elect or appoint officials and committees at each level. The latter put together an image of a good society and identify the measures they will take to bring it about if their party is returned to power. They nominate candidates to contest elections as the party’s standard bearers, carry the party’s message (“manifesto”) to the voters, help their candidates with the mechanics of organizing and moving their election campaigns.

The elections under consideration here are held for the membership of parliament or a provincial legislature. In any given election some of the winners may have contested as independent candidates, but the great majority of them ran as nominees of one or another party. Needless to say, those in the latter group who won owed their victory to their party in some considerable measure. What should they have to do for the party in return?

If the object of electoral victory is plunder, then obviously the winners will be expected to share the proceeds with the party organization and workers who helped them win. But even if that is actually the case, plunder is never professed to be the object. Serving the public interest is, and it is only in that context that we may say anything further on the subject.

Some of the party notables who did not reach parliament or a provincial assembly may have entered a village, town, or district council or become some kind of a “nazim.” Party activists who do not hold any public office at all may still have the esteem of some of their fellow citizens and a degree of prestige and influence in their neighbourhoods. Moreover, they have the satisfaction that they are doing something good that needs to be done. They are working to meet some of society’s vital needs. In many democratic societies party officials and workers find all of this gratifying enough.

By virtue of the services they have rendered, should they not be entitled to instruct the men and women they have sent to the parliament, and to high offices in the government, as to what the latter must do and how? If they don’t have the right to instruct, can they at least expect to be consulted on a regular basis? In a parliamentary system the answer to the first of these questions is clearly in the negative, and a feeble affirmative to the second.

Parties are vital, almost indispensable, for operating a democratic system. But even so the party that wins the election, and whose representatives in the parliament are numerous enough to form the government, remains distinct from the government they form. In institutional terms the party and the government have not become the same. Party men, howsoever wise or influential, who stand outside parliament, have not become government functionaries as a result of the party’s electoral victory.

In a parliamentary system the legislature is the organ designated to govern. It is sovereign within the limits placed upon it by the Constitution (which, in a prescribed mode, it may amend). Strictly speaking, the prime minister and his cabinet may be viewed as nothing more than a committee of the legislature. Under the law this committee is accountable to its parent, the legislature, and not to an external agency. In a formal and legal context, there cannot then be any question of this government being subservient to the party that may have helped it come into being.

In figuring out an appropriate pattern of interaction between the government and the relevant party organization, we have to contend with an additional complication. At this time the federal government, and three of the provincial governments, are made of multi-party coalitions. Should the leaders of each one of the constituent parties outside the parliament be considered entitled to give instructions to their respective members in the cabinet? In that event we will have a fractured, internally incoherent government. In fact, we will have three or more governments, instead of one, each going its own way. In our present situation, then, the idea of the government being subservient to the party is entirely untenable.

Yet, it is a fact also that to a large extent the government owes its existence to the exertions the party made before and during the elections. Moreover, if the government performs poorly, discredit will result to the party concerned, and its prospects of winning the next elections will decline. A case can then be made for holding the government accountable not only to the parliament but, in some measure, also to the party that had put it in place.

It will not do to secure concord between them by letting the prime minister head the party at the same time. That will result in the government smothering the party. Not as majestic as parliament, political parties are nevertheless institutions in their own right, critical for operating a democratic system. Their own identity and integrity must be safeguarded as much as that of the parliament and the cabinet.

What is then to be done? The problem becomes more amenable to resolution if we think of liaison and consultation instead of subservience of one to the other. The prime minister and some of his colleagues may be included in the party’s higher councils to facilitate consultation. The advice given to him should relate to matters of high policy and not to the government’s day-to-day functioning. If the prime minister cannot accept the views pressed upon him by the party “high command,” he can offer to resign (as Prime Minister Nehru did in India on several occasions) and let the party see if it can do without him.

Presidential system: a proposal

THE politicians, the press and the pressure groups have all combined to make the people of Pakistan believe that only the parliamentary form of government suits their temperament or genius as it is usually said. In fact it has been made to look synonymous with democracy itself.

The mere mention of presidential system as an alternative to the parliamentary one raises the spectre of an autocrat ruling with the help of bureaucracy. The preference for the parliamentary system, it may be instantly stated, is confined to that section of the people which is politically conscious by virtue of inherited fiefs, or businesses in more recent times, or to those who rode the crest of a popular movement, like Z.A. Bhutto’s. The intelligentsia and the affluent are either indifferent to politics or view it with disdain, much less to worry about the form of government.

The ordinary people are content if a government is less oppressive and corrupt than the one they experienced before. In fact to a vast majority the government means no more than the local police station and court or the tax and utility offices at that level. The common man hardly ever needs the big bosses or establishments above and when he does, he cannot reach them.

Without going into the theory or rhetoric of the forms of government, here follows an outline of the presidential system, adapted to the conditions and experience of Pakistan, to dispel the prejudice against its being dictatorial or unworkable especially in a federation where one of its units is more populous than the other three put together.

The president and the vice president will be directly elected by the people in a countrywide constituency. Both will not ever hail from the same province. Their term will be three years and the incumbents restricted to two terms. The president will be the chief executive and the vice president the chief operating officer (the role of each is by now well defined in business and could be profitably followed in government).

The president will make policies, the vice-president will execute them. The president will be free to choose his cabinet subject to the condition that not more than half of the ministers will be from Punjab and at least half of the lot must come from the parliament.

Elections to the senate (with equal representation from all the provinces) will be direct through individual constituencies as they are to the national assembly. The chairman of the senate and speaker of the NA will be from the provinces other than those of the president and vice-president. Thus each province will hold one of the top four posts at all times which is not possible in a parliamentary system because the prime minister is elected by the parliament and he, in turn, chooses whomever he likes to fill all the other important jobs in the federation and even in the provinces.

The governors of the provinces too will be directly elected with the whole province as a constituency. They will select their ministers in the same manner and proportion as the president i.e. at least half of them must be the members of the assembly.

All policy decisions, financial appropriations and appointments (ministers, ambassadors, judges, state bank governor, public service commission chairman, commanders of the armed forces, secretaries of the government) made by the president will be subject to ratification by the committees of the senate and NA after public hearings if their credentials are questioned. A bill refused assent by the president or governor would become a law only by two-thirds majority. The arrangement in the provinces will be similar.

No seats will be reserved for women or minorities or technocrats. Instead the political parties will be required to have at least ten per cent of women candidates for direct election. The intention is that the legislators themselves should not form electoral college for that has been a veritable source of their financial and moral corruption. Neither the president will have the power to dissolve the parliament nor the parliament will be able to remove him. So will it be in the provinces.

Contrast these stabilizing features with the vagaries of the parliamentary rule in the country when it was not under military rule:

The prime minister was chosen either by party caucus or by the military commanders only to be endorsed by the parliament. That was the position before Ayub’s coup, so was it after Ziaul Haq and it is no different now. The prime minister in turn ran the government with the help of a kitchen cabinet or through a cabal. The parliament if it wasn’t dissolved by the president was abolished by the army.

The ministers, parliamentary secretaries, chairmen of committees were appointed not for their worth but to garner majority or to bribe recalcitrant legislators. Imagine the huge cost, and nuisance to boot, to the public of 45 parliamentary secretaries appointed in Punjab when a single party (Q League) has majority in the assembly. The number at the centre and provinces ruled by coalitions is bound to be much larger considering that a score of parties have to be placated. Most legislation was through presidential ordinances adopted without change by the assemblies. The Senate played no role either in legislation or in tempering executive authority.

A presidential system with stipulated safeguards will certainly impart stability and prevent concentration of power in one individual or institution which has been the chief source of maladministration. The controversy over 58(2)(b) and National Security Council which has bedevilled the politics of the country since its existence will cease. A shorter tenure of three years instead of the present five will in itself obviate the necessity of dissolution or dismissal. The experience has shown that five years is too long a period for the people to put up with any government, even a good one.

Next to political instability, or ranking even higher, is discontent in the provinces as the fountain-head of all power, particularly economic, lies at the centre. Musharraf’s devolution scheme has only added to this discontent, inflamed nationalist passions and stoked hatred against Punjab for its hegemony in politics, economy, bureaucracy, army.

The presidential system being proposed here will reverse that trend by increasing the power and prestige of the provinces. A directly elected governor instead of a chief minister (who is either a junior official of the ruling party at the centre or an acolyte of the prime minister) will administer the province and fight for its rights on his popular standing unmindful of the central direction.

In the present parliamentary system the provinces are weak and getting weaker not only because most functions under the Constitution vest in the federation but also because the leadership of all major political parties has a vested interest in a strong centre. The provincial autonomy received no impetus when Bhutto and then his daughter Benazir Bhutto from Sindh were the prime ministers nor will it now that Zafarullah Jamali hails from Balochistan. The provinces weakened under Bhuttos and now that they are mere vassals of the centre look at the lot of the chief ministers! Akram Durrani, Ali Mohammad Maher, Jam Yusuf, Pervez Elahi may have other qualities but they can never be champions of provincial autonomy. Their strings are held by their central masters.

The route to the autonomy of the provinces lies through a presidential system in which their governors will owe their office to the people’s mandate and not to the favour of a party or individual at the centre.

The long, sordid course the current negotiations, or confrontation, between the government and the opposition have followed hold no hope either of stability or autonomy. The threats from abroad and violence at home are too serious for the leisurely banter of the negotiators. The magniloquent Sheikh. Rashid has already spoken: The political regrouping — in plain words horse-trading — will continue, no matter the talks succeed or fail.

The comic opera on Islamabad stage and the tragedy of real life on the streets where five hulking youth, all real brothers, are gunned down for their private belief, and a mother and her four young daughters are slaughtered for the honour of others (all in one day) recalls to mind the debaters of the Baghdad court when the Mongol hordes were at its gates. The debaters of Islamabad may be less frivolous but the besieging hordes are more numerous for they are the masses of Pakistan. To make a fresh start is to avert a sack.

The small-minded shopper

THE US apparel industry is in the midst of a new project to standardize clothing sizes, its aim to make trousers and shirts and dresses fit the proportions of real Americans. Using three-dimensional scanners, the “SizeUSA” census is measuring 10,000 shoppers of six different age groups and the four most populous ethnic groups.

And when it’s all done, the census takers explain, more size-12 clothes will fit size-12 people, more 32-waist slacks will fit 32 waists, and all the customers will know their real sizes.

The industry group conducting the census, Textile/Clothing Technology Corp., says this is the first comprehensive measurement of Americans. Previous studies sized up military personnel for the government, with an eye to designing uniforms. That could explain a lot about American fashion.

Other sponsors are Target, Liz Claiborne, Levi Strauss and Sara Lee, which gets a double whammy out of participating. It can use the results first to find out exactly how its pound cake has changed the shape of America and then to learn how better to cover that shape with its Hanes underwear label. —Los Angeles Times

Distribution of revenues: Finance commissions-III

TO start with, four points need to be emphasized. First, under the Indian Constitution, it is not obligatory on the part of the Union Government to accept the Finance Commission’s recommendations as they are not of a ‘binding nature’. They are not categorized as ‘awards’. Second, the Indian Constitution lays down that the president shall cause every recommendation made by the finance commission, together with an explanatory memorandum as to the action taken thereon, to be laid before each house of the parliament.

Third, up till now, the sharing of taxes on income was mandatory, while it was not obligatory that the proceeds of any excise duty should be shared between the Union and the states — the Constitution did not specify the commodities, the net proceeds of such duties thereon ‘might’ be shared. These could be shared only if the Parliament by law so provided in accordance with such principles of distribution as might be formulated by such law, on the recommendations of the finance commission.

Fourth, the Constitution (Eightieth Amendment) Act, 2000, has “altered the pattern of sharing of central taxes between the centre and the states in a fundamental way”. Now, all taxes and duties, referred to in the Union List, except a very few, shall be distributed between the Union and the states.

The recommendations of the early Indian finance commissions need not worry us. Despite admonitory memoranda, submitted by Lady Ursula K. Hicks, of Oxford, (“The distribution of the transfer between the states whereby ... both income tax and union excise revenue is determined by crude population is unsatisfactory. If population is to play such an important part in the allocation, it should at least be weighted. This could be appropriately achieved by giving an extra weight both for supernormal and subnormal density, both of which give rise to additional administrative costs”.), they had settled down to two criteria — mainly ‘population’ adjunct with ‘collection’ in the case of income tax, and ‘population’ only for excise duties.

However, the third finance commission made an observation about excise duties that while ‘population’ would be the major factor of distribution, other factors like “relative financial weakness of the states, the disparity in the levels of development reached, the

percentage of scheduled castes and tribes and backward classes in their population should also be taken into account in determining.the share to be allotted to each state individually”.

The fourth commission considered only population and contribution for distribution of income tax among the states. But for Union excise duties, it decided, “In distribution of proceeds of excise duties, we have not taken financial weakness but have taken economic and social backwardness as indicated by the following factors: (i) Per capita gross value of agricultural production; (ii) Per capital value added by manufacture; (iii) Percentage of workers (as defined in the census) to the total population; (iv) Percentage of enrolment in classes I to V to the population in age-group 6-11; (v) Population per hospital bed; (vi) Percentage of rural population to total population; and (vii) Percentage of the population of scheduled castes and tribes to total population”.

The fifth finance commission recommended, in the case of distribution of income tax, that 90 per cent of the share be distributed on the basis of population; and the balance 10 per cent on the figures of assessments, after allowing for reduction on account of appellate orders, refunds, revisions, rectifications, etc. For excise duties, the recommendation was that 80 per cent of the share be distributed on the basis of population of respective states.

For the remaining 20 per cent, two interesting formulas were worked out — 2/3rds to be distributed among the states, where per capita income is below average per capita income from all states’ average, multiplied by the population of the State; and 1/3rd to be distributed in accordance with the integrated index of backwardness, on the basis of (i) scheduled tribes’ population; (ii) number of factory workers per lakh population; (iii) net irrigated area per cultivator; (iv) length of railways and surface roads per 100 sq km; (v) shortfall in the number of school-going children as compared to those of school-going age; and (vi) the number of hospital beds her 1010 population.

For the sixth commission, population remained the basic factor for distribution of both income tax and excise duties. In the case of income tax, 90 per cent of the states’ share was to be distributed on population, and 10 per cent on the figures of assessment. The 75 per cent of the share of Union excise duties were to be distributed on the basis of population, and 25 per cent weightage was given to backwardness, worked out in relation “to the distance of a state’s per capita income from that state with the highest per capita income, multiplied by the population of the state concerned, according to 1971 census”.

The seventh commission gave 90 per cent weightage to population for income tax and 10 per cent to the states’ contribution, as measured by net assessment. But for Union excise duties, the commission gave equal weightage of 25 per cent each to (i) population factor; (ii) the inverse of the per capita state domestic product; (iii) the percentage of poor; and (iv) a formula of revenue equalisation as worked out by the Commission itself.

For both income tax (75 per cent out of shareable 85 per cent) and Union excise duties (40 per cent out of 45 per cent of the shareable pool), the eighth commission adopted a similar formula: (i) 25 per cent on the basis of population; (ii) 25 per cent on the basis of income adjusted total population (inverse of per capita income multiplied by population); and (iii) 50 per cent on the basis of ‘distance’ of per capita income from per capita income of the richest state, multiplied by population.

In addition, the remaining 10 per cent of the net proceeds of the divisible income tax was recommended to be distributed among the states on the basis of assessment, while the balance 5 per cent of the net proceeds of divisible excise duty was to be shared among the eleven deficit states.

The ninth commission broke new grounds by recommending two separate formulae for the sharing of income tax and excise duties. For income tax, the formula was: (i) 10 per cent on the basis of ‘contribution’, as measured by the assessment of income tax in each state; (ii) 45 per cent on the basis of ‘distance’ of per capita income of the state from the state with the highest per capita income, multiplied by 1971 population of the state concerned; (iii) 22.5 per cent on the basis of population of the state in 1971; (iv) 11.25 per cent on the basis of a composite index of backwardness; and (v) 11.25 per cent on the basis of inverse of per capita income multiplied by the population of the state in 1971.

The excise duties were recommended to be shared among the states in the following manner: (i) 25 per cent on the basis of 1971 population of the state; (ii) 12.5 per cent on the basis of income adjusted total population of 1971 weighted with the inverse of the average per capita income of the state; (iii) 12.5 per cent on the basis of backwardness; (iv) 33.5 per cent on the basis of distance of per capita income of a state, from that of the state having the highest per capita income, multiplied by 1971 population; and (v) 16.5 per cent to be distributed among the deficit states.

The tenth commission recommended a uniform set of formulas for distribution of income tax and excise duties among the states. The share of the states in the net proceeds of income tax was fixed at 77.5 per cent. For excise duties, 47.5 per cent of the net proceeds of Union excise duties was determined to be the share of the states.

The criteria for determining the inter-se shares of the states in the shareable net proceeds of income-tax and Union excise duties were based on the following indices: (i) 20 per cent on the basis of population of 1971; (ii) 60 per cent on the basis of ‘distance’ of per capita income; (iii) 5 per cent on the area adjusted; (iv) 5 per cent on the basis of index of infrastructure; and (v) 10 per cent on the basis of tax effort.

This formula was applicable to 40 per cent out of the total shareable 47.5 per cent of excise duties. The balance of 7.5 per cent of the shareable excise duties was kept apart for distribution among the states assessed to be in deficit, after taking into account the shares of the states in other taxes.

The most important recommendations of the tenth commission was “An Alternate Scheme for Devolution of Revenues”. The Commission favoured a system of vertical resource sharing in which all the central taxes were pooled and a proportion devolved to the state.

The commission came to the conclusion that in the context of the current economic reforms, the proposed arrangement was likely to have distinct advantages over the present system. This will be discussed in a later article.