T-Faz
RETIRED MOD
- Joined
- Feb 16, 2010
- Messages
- 4,962
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'Clamping down on corruption' in the PSE's is too challenging an endeavor. Depending on the government, PSE's may or may not get stuffed with political cronies and supporters, and any 'clamping down' done earlier goes to waste. The only avenues to fix the situation is to enter into public-private partnerships or privatize them completely, with management in the hand of the private sector in the former case, so that profit and growth drives PSE decision making, not 'how many votes can be bought by appealing to the unions and stuffing party workers in'.
The sole reason why our PSE's are in shambles is because of the management. Most of the times, these enterprises are being run by people who have no knowledge of the tasks what so ever. Such people are usually appointed only because of the backing that they have. The task of rooting out corruption or mismanagement is not difficult if the government, be it civilian or military, does not have to pander to some group that it requires the support of.
So it is entirely up to the government to press forward and make an effort to bring a permanent change whereby the following governments can't undo the progress. The army had the chance to bring about positive change but it did not happen because like the civilian government, it too had to appease some groups.
Musharraf did in fact privatize several PSE's during his time in office. Pakistan steel was in the works had the SC not stepped in, so I disagree that he did not do much. Such is however the state of our politicians and government, that the GoP forced the privatized KESC to reverse its decision to lay off 4000 workers, and allegedly allowed hooliganism and rioting to take place in order to force the management to reverse.
He tried and he failed, even though he had a lot of power and he was very popular. This should have converted to some positive change in governance and civilian structure but that clearly did not happen. As for the KESC matter, that is partly due to the fact that any dissent can cause the failed government to collapse and so they appease any number who goes against them.
Now I agree with you that these reforms are tough to implement, but the problem with your suggestion, of only addressing the military side, is that it does nothing to address the actual deep rooted issues that are the major drain on the country. All your proposal does is create a small bit of room for a year or so, and then we'll be back to where we are now.
I haven't stated that only the military side should be addressed, the civilian side is clearly the major issue but the military had the opportunity to bring in changes that would have helped in bettering our situation.
All they did was what you said, created a small bit of room for a year or so, and then we are back to where we were in the past.