The business of dishonesty

Corruption takes many forms from the pilfering of office stationery to the manoeuverings at the top of the political pile to give advantage and preference to a favoured few. A ream or two of copy paper going AWOL is no threat to the integrity of the state dishonest as it may be, but the possibly illegal appointment of a chief economist most certainly is. All concerned with the appointment of Dr Nadeem Javaid have thrown up their hands in horror and denied any wrongdoing, but the trail of breadcrumbs is long and clear to those that know how to read these things.

The Economist Group has approached the Supreme Court alleging the illegal extension of the adviser for the development budget on the grounds that Ahsan Iqbal had illegally appointed a man who is a relative and in terms of experience immature for the post he is now in, as well as the appointment being made from outside the Economist Group. The appointment should have been made from within, on the grounds of merit. The Economist Group is the lead entity for economic policymaking.

Following the breadcumbs we find that Nawaz Sharif had appointed Javaid from the private sector over three years ago by engineering a relaxation of the rules, reducing the ‘required experience’ from 25 to 15 and opening the door for him. The job specification for chief economist requires a minimum of 10 years of economic policymaking which Javaid falls well short of. There have been other attempts to challenge the appointment, with the Islamabad High Court on one occasion preventing Javaid from working, but the exertion of behind-the-scenes pressure on those making the challenge produced a threat of a posting to Balochistan and the petition fell.

This matters. It is naked nepotism and a blatant disregard of standard operating procedures, and any protest to the contrary is disingenuous. There has to be an end to the culture of cronyism that has so eroded the quality of the civil service over the years, the chronic misuse of power. And the possibility of reform? Vanishingly small no matter who is in power.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 3^rd, 2018.

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