Role of Bureaucracy and Corrupt Politicians of Pakistan

In our society, bureaucracy is not a set of individuals who act according to their whims and fancies or merely to promote their selfish interest. Pakistan has inherited the bureaucratic structure and procedures from British colonial master. It has grown up, with the needs of time, in a highly developed “power complex”, like a machine or a system of self-sustaining living organism. It exists on the basic of rules, regulations, laws and constitutional provisions. It would be correct to say that bureaucratic “power complex” was invented by British to rule their colonies. Britain itself did not have a “power complex” to regulate its life as the one it created for India and other colonies. Its rule was responsible to none but to the government in London through the governor-general.

The bureaucracy – the Indian Civil Service – was essentially a mercenary force in which the sons of the local collaborating elite were inducted to do the dirty work for the colonizers, which they did with extreme “efficiency”. Its interests and orientations were, therefore, diametrically opposed to those of the people and those of the post-colonial independent societies. The bureaucracy thus was the biggest hurdle in the way of decolonization of our society and the creation of a truly democratic state in the post-independence ear.

In the late forties and early fifties the political parties played different roles in the two wings of Pakistan. while in the eastern wing the parties had a mass appeal and they could win elections on the basis of their popularity, in the western wing such popular appeal was lacking and hence elections could be managed at the bureaucratic level. It is this opportunity which pushed the position of bureaucracy to greater heights and they could rise above the politicians in the western wing. With the passage of time the failure to produce a constitution in time further lowered the position of the politicians. The rise of three bureaucrats, Ghulam Mohammad Malik, Choudhuri Mohammad Ali and Iskandar Mirza gave moral support to the strength of the bureaucrats and they could manipulate the Central Government in a manner that suited them.

This led to disenchantment between the two wings of Pakistan. the comparatively better position of the bureaucracy and the politicians in the western wing of the country played a decisive role in making the politicians weaker and weaker pushing up the bureaucrats to higher position of not only executive control but also policy making. Governor General, later President, Iskandar Mirza could also manipulate to form the Republican Party. Thus for all practical purposes the politicians in the western wing came to play in the hands of the bureaucrats. Such a dual role of a government can be played better by the army personnel than the civil bureaucracy since army commanders are more disciplined and hard working. Thus the door was opened for military rule, not because the politicians failed but because the bureaucrats would not give any chance to the politicians to play a genuine role by going to the people for support. Democracy, which started well in Pakistan, was throttle by the civil as well as military bureaucrats.

The first public exposure that who was really in control of Pakistan political system, behind the façade of nominal parliamentary institution, came with governor general’s dismissal of the Prime Minister in April 1953. Ghulam Mohammad, a bureaucrat by profession had taken over power as governor-general after the assassination of Liaquat Ali Khan. His dismissal of prime minister Khawaja Nazimuddin’s cabinet impugned the role of the legislature as the maker and sustainer of government. This showed how in-effective was the link between the prime minister and the institutions of party and parliament. Thus the establishment of a system of central executive rule, rather than of cabinet government based on a representative legislature encouraged the concentration of power in a group of officials divorced from mass politics.

Playing persistently over the wicket of “external security threat” from India, from the very inception of Pakistan on the one hand and, negation to evolve strong, stable and genuine political institutions and forces in the first decade of our independence on the other, paved the way to the emergency of new political actors along with bureaucratic lineal decedents of ICS. In 1958 the army did not only overtly jumped in our politics but in fact it proved as a foundation stone for the subsequent martial laws of 1969 and 1977, which in turn facilitated the emergence of military bureaucracy and a group of people composed of both rural feudal and urban corporate interest, that could be rightly called “capitalist and elite” force.

The bureaucracy and the police play an important role in the running of the system. The standards and quality of life being apparently enjoyed by the majority of our bureaucrats today leave no room for doubt that it has over the years become an extremely lucrative and comfortable business to be a bureaucrat. The comforts and glamorous lifestyles reserved for the bureaucracy in this country are with very few parallels in the contemporary world. The sizes of the Deputy Commissioner houses, Superintendent of Police houses, and Commissioner houses and so on, alone are sufficient to support and corroborate this allegation.

According to a retired bureaucrat, the present bureaucrats could be divided into three categories: the obstinate uncompromising old type, the bewildered transient, and the accomplished ones. The self-disciplined old type, still hanging on to his professional ethics, is treated by our society as a fossil. He is today an insignificant residue, appearing as a mole, cyst or pimple on the muscular mass. His normal abodes are the dark, dingy, desolate and unfrequented corners of the administrative world. The rulers are happy to keep him in cold storage because he can say “no” to them. The bewildered transient is in the evolutionary process of forced conversion from the old to the new. He is unable to withstand the social compulsions around and the career ambitions within. Internal conflicts notwithstanding, he goes along with the rulers unwillingly. The show, however, is stolen by the new bureaucrat who nods, but he nods only to those who matter. All the antennae of his personality are attuned to the corridors of power. He has perfected the art of extracting the full price for selling his soul. His creative genius pours lyrical praise in royal ears. His Midas touch converts don’ts into dos, because his dexterous dynamism is not deterred by rules, regulations, procedures or systems. To sum up, he has been elevated from “government servant” to “government partner,” eligible for a holy alliance with the politicians. For his career prospects even the sky is not the limit.

It is unusual for top politicians like primer ministers to say what they truly feel about the bureaucracy. In a speech in mid-1996 PM Benazir Bhutto did the unprecedented. She called senior officers arrogant mischievous and sycophantic and interested only in their own progress and promotion. A very serious accusation was that they leaked out confidential information to the secret agencies (and the World Bank) in order to curry favour with them, not bothering if they let down the government they were supposed to serve. In her charge-sheet Ms Bhutto also said something that had been left unsaid before, that senior officers only wanted posts in which there was clout and money, and that most of them were as corrupt as the politicians whom they blamed for the ills of the country.