Future of G-B government

The history may repeat itself again


Shabbir Mir January 02, 2019
The writer is a senior journalist based in Gilgit. He tweets @ShabbirMir

In what is his first direct confrontation with the bureaucracy, the Gilgit-Baltistan chief minister reversed the bureaucracy’s earlier decision to purchase new Android cell phones for its 40 senior bureaucrats, stating that the public money cannot be spent like this.

The decision may have saved some money for Hafeezur Rehman’s government but its political consequences will be far reaching as the estranged bureaucracy will be more inclined to get advice from the Centre now than the regional government. Imran Khan’s federal government no longer appears to be in a friendly mood to help the G-B government in completion of some crucial projects.

The change of the G-B governor and the chief secretary has already set the alarm bells ringing for the G-B government as the PTI’s central leadership will go all out against rival parties to secure its vote bank in G-B ahead of the polls. For that purpose, the PTI will use the bureaucracy, just as the PML-N did in 2003 after winning the general elections. The chief secretaries of that time toed the line of Barjees Tahir, then federal minister for G-B and Kashmir affairs, making things difficult for the government. The situation turned so volatile for PPP’s Mehdi Shah and his party that the PPP ultimately faced a whitewash in the elections 2015.

The history may repeat itself again.

In the past three and a half years, Rehman adopted a reconciliatory policy towards the powerful bureaucracy lest they should get annoyed. The period could have been far more productive than what it proved to be had Rehman learned the art of administration from his political mentor Shehbaz Sharif.

Besides his own heavily-mandated government in G-B, Rehman had gotten unconditional support from the PML-N’s federal and Punjab governments, and therefore was placed in a position to speed up the development projects. But the ‘go soft’ attitude of the chief minister squandered the opportunity. For instance, the monster of power crisis is out there today with as much intensity as before. The 20 hours of load-shedding in a day in extreme weather conditions is not what the government should be taking credit for. Certainly the outages do not affect those at the helm as they have been provided with special lines for round-the-clock electricity.

This discrimination is making a mockery of the chief minister’s claims of introducing a uniform policy for all. Interestingly the power of the secretary hasn’t been changed yet. Similarly the health secretary also happens to be a ‘chosen guy’ who has been enjoying the chief minister’s uninterrupted favours for the past three years. He has also been assigned additional charge as the project director of the PPHI, a job with a six-digit additional salary.

Similarly the chief minister’s lack of grip over administrative matters is evident from the fact that hundreds of employees working on projects, including the Rescue 1122, have not been paid for the past six to seven months. The officials at the Centre of these projects are least bothered, and same goes for the chief minister. Going by this lenient policy, Rehman chose not to interfere in a policy, approved by the previous government of the PPP, that entitled the Pakistan Administrative Service and Police Service of Pakistan officers posted in G-B to an amount of about Rs350,000 as part of airfare monetisation on quarterly basis, whether or not they travel. Rehman thought it could prove to be interference if he tried to rationalise the policy.

But Chief Minister Rehman’s ‘honeymoon period’ is already over following the departure of the PML-N government from the Centre. With the nature of tensions between the PTI and the PML-N, one can easily guess what fate is in store for the G-B government in the weeks and months to come. For all his love and loyalty with party supremo Nawaz Sharif, Rehman has definitely chosen a wrong path to tread on at a wrong time. The coming weeks and months are certainly going to be decisive for the G-B government.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 2nd, 2019.

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