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EDITORIAL: Transparency and efficiency should be the buzzwords

Last Saturday’s donors’ conference should make the government feel better. It managed to get the international community to pledge $5.827 billion, which is $627 million more than the need assessment of $5.2 billion. Out of this money, $1.9 billion is in grants while the remaining $3.9 billion is in soft loans. Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz’s statement that November 19 was a “very successful day for Pakistan” was spot-on. However, much as it was difficult to get the foreign governments, international financial institutions and other groups to come up with the money Pakistan requires to rehabilitate the victims of the earthquake and reconstruct the areas devastated by it, the real work for the government begins now. Consider.

When the money is not in the kitty, inefficiency can hide behind lack of resources. But now that efforts have been made and the money pledged — we are told that the UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan is very good at getting governments to turn pledges into actual disbursements — when the funds begin pouring in, there should be very little room for either inefficiency or misuse. The government needs a very clear plan on how to go about the twin tasks of rehab and reconstruction. But any such plan will require to be pitched much above the intelligence quotient of the bureaucracy.

It is refreshing to hear the government promise transparency in the utilisation of funds as well as internal and external audits. This is very important and should make the baseline for spending any money that comes from abroad. Foreign donors — governments, NGOs and other groups — have fished into their pockets to help Pakistan. It is a relationship of trust and shows that the foreign policy route taken by General Pervez Musharraf has paid off and Pakistan is not an isolated country. However, for that reason also, this money needs to be spent correctly. Its optimum utilisation will depend on how well the government is able to handle the situation. This is also where it will need the services of experts — foreign and local — more than the offerings of its traditional, log-jammed bureaucrats.

Another reason for a good spending plan relates to the $3.9 billion soft-loan component of the incoming funds. We do not know the terms — payback time and rate of interest — of these soft loans so far; some of them may eventually become grants. Nonetheless, paying back is a serious exercise and any rehab and reconstruction plan must bear that in mind. Jane Cocking, Pakistan’s Oxfam humanitarian coordinator, is already disappointed that the larger component of the funds pledged is in the form of loans rather than grants. “Oxfam fears that Saturday’s pledges will prove to be short-term solutions for long-term needs,” she told the media, adding that the money would add to Pakistan’s debt burden. The government does not seem to have reacted to her statement so far but Ms Cocking should know what she is talking about. It makes sense to plan things in a way that can generate funds for paying back the loans. Of course, this is for the experts to work out. Our fear is that officials tend to come up with schemes that are clever by half and almost always opaque. In the 1990s even the State Bank of Pakistan was accused of handling money in ways that were not strictly commensurate with financial propriety.

The money is available. We should spend it efficiently and transparently. *

EDITORIAL #2: A real think tank is born

The Lahore-based Research Society of International Law (RSIL) held a function on Saturday to mark the successful conclusion of its Fellowship Programme on International Law, interacting with scholars from Islamabad’s Strategic Plans Division, Institute of Strategic Studies, Federal Ministry of Defence, and Department of Political Science of Government College University Lahore. Also among the fellows there was a lawyer. Young law graduates with degrees from universities abroad acted as “resource persons”, exposing the fellows to texts and commentaries rarely consulted in Pakistan. The good news is that, thanks to this think-tank, a number of state institutions have become sensitised to looking at Pakistan’s international relations in the light of multi- and bi-laterally binding legal documents. RSIL has already given its presentation on the Law of Sea to the Pakistan Navy’s premier institution in Lahore, the Naval War College, and has introduced its hard-nosed legal approach to a number of state institutions that needed it.

RSIL is a genuinely independent think tank in Pakistan. Others are funded by the establishment and are used to provide an intellectual underpinning to policies formulated by non-experts rather than the other way round.

Discussions on our TV channels and in our seminars and newspaper editorials take place without legal reference. Such important issues as the CTBT are subject to emotional outbursts by journalists and politicians who have not read the relevant texts. If RSIL is supported it can cure us of the lack of “emotional distance” that usually mars our discourse because it already has the best archives of treaty texts needed to discuss world politics in light of international law. But RSIL is still working on meagre financial resources and lacks proper academic contacts with diverse national and international institutions. For starters, therefore, the government must facilitate a better interface between RSIL and its various departments (above all, our Foreign Office) so that the new institution can take off. *

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