The PM’s honesty

The Prime Minister Imran Khan is taking a lot of flak for his candid admission that his team came to power unprepared. The PM’s and PTI’s cheerleaders, including surprisingly some among the so-called independent op-ed community, have instead come in support of the PM, singing praises of the PM’s honesty and his trial-and-error approach to policymaking.

There is no denying that policymaking is a complex affair. Covid-19 and the twin gales of social media and technology has caused the best of developed world leaders to lose sweat; for leaders of developing countries with a Pakistan like historical mess, the world is far more complex demanding nothing but a constant run of trial-and-error.

But you cannot pretend to know it all, boast about a dream team, and then if you fail, you find political cushion on the notion that after all we are just humans. You cannot have your cake and eat it too. Trial-and-error approach that comes along humility, rather than know-it-all complex, requires inclusion of the wider polity and transparency of the policymaking process. Both, inclusion, including effective provincial coordination, and transparency, are missing elements under Khan’s regime. Not that prior regimes were emblems of transparency and inclusion, but they were not popularly perceived to be Pakistan’s last hope either.

In his recent admission, the PM candidly said that for about 18 months his government was unable to even get actual figures of different sectors. Even if one gives the PM credit for this honesty, did the PM and his team really need 18 months to figure out that systems and institutions responsible for gathering, analyzing and reporting various socioeconomic datasets are in poor state in Pakistan. If so, then it only reflects poor governing acumen.

Economic observers including this space has long been calling for the need to urgently reform the systems and institutions responsible for socioeconomic statistics and make those institutions independent and autonomous, not only because good governance requires timely data but also because if the PM really wants to hire and fire ministers on the basis of performance, then the PM should have a periodic report card.

Yet to this date, long after the first 18 months of ‘trying to find correct figures’, the PM’s cabinet has not taken bold decisions on this subject and stepped on it, even though the finance minister still bemoans about statistics. (Read also: Covid-economy: Big Data should be Pakistan’s New Deal, Apr 16, 2020 & Cabinet members’ mistrust of PBS calls for action Sep 28, 2020)

Both the PM and his cheerleaders would do well to appreciate that the PM’s job is not an entry level position at a bank; it’s the top job of the country. There are no probation periods in top jobs. You go big or go home in top jobs.

When politicians ask for vote, they ask people to trust in their capabilities to lead you. If two years later, a politician admits that his team was unprepared, then it is an implicit admission of the fact that he himself was unprepared. That’s not the kind of statement one likes to hear from someone competing for people’s trust.

Political parties do not exist for rival parties to gain power over them; they don’t also exist to give practical lessons of morality and religiosity; they exist to win elections for without power they are nothing. Only time can tell whether or not the PM’s recent admission of honesty will turn out to be one of the shortest suicide notes in Pakistan’s political history but surely, expect PTI’s opposition to beat the drum of the PM’s un-candidate-like self-acknowledged incompetency come 2023.