Musical chairs again

There are reports that several of the leading bureaucrats in the civil service are vying for three key posts with international financial institutions. These have become vacant at a time of political flux, particularly in the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) after the ouster of Nawaz Sharif as prime minister. Two posts are Washington based — the director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) that has been vacant for months and the executive director of the World Bank that will become a vacant post within the week. Also up for grabs is the post of executive director of the Asian Development Bank based in Manila. All are regarded as plum jobs. In the latter case ex-PM Sharif had appointed his own cabinet secretary, and procedurally the posts had to have the formalities completed by the finance minister in this case Ishaq Dar, a close relative of the former premier.

There is more than a whiff of insider trading about all this, to say nothing of rampant nepotism. Today, Mr Sharif is struggling to keep a grip of the party with a wife ailing in London and his fiscal crony Ishaq Dar finding his wings clipped in the new cabinet. Uncertainty abounds. There are sources that are suggesting that there are bureaucrats keen to leave the country in the light of changes at the top in the PML-N.

It is going to be the current PM who will oversee the process of elevation of grade 21 officers to grade 22 but there are already anomalies in the appointment schedule and the federal government has not initiated the process to fill these three key posts suggesting further future irregularity. Yet again there is a dilution of standards within both governance and the civil service, a form of corruption that is not less unwholesome than the manipulations of posts lower down the pecking order. Those that occupy these posts ought to be of impeccable character and selected entirely on merit. The chances of that happening are remote indeed.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 8^th, 2017.

Like Opinion & Editorial on Facebook, follow @ETOpEd on Twitter to receive all updates on all our daily pieces.