The first three months of a new government are generally viewed as its “honeymoon period”. During this time, the mood of the people is normally up-beat and the air is expectant with change. According to conventional wisdom, this is when the government should clearly articulate its policy framework, swiftly harness its expert manpower and boldly demonstrate its purposefulness. This is also the proper political environment in which to launch critical measures aimed either at imposing a degree of hardship on some vested interests or at providing relief to groups discriminated against in the past. A government’s performance during these early months acquires political significance because it sets the agenda, quality and pace of reform in the most conducive of circumstances.
If all this is evident enough, why is the new government of prime minister Benazir Bhutto looking rather cheerless? It isn’t, claims the ubiquitous “government spokesman” in Islamabad. The prime minister, we are informed, forswears “quick-fixes” and “propaganda gimmicks” for cheap popularity a la Nawaz Sharif. The “reality”, it appears, is better reflected in an eight-page list of “achievements” handed out by the media managers of the government.
A perusal of this list, however, reveals considerable padding. Many of the “achievements” are pious statements of intent culled from the PPP’s manifesto; others are dividends of policies and projects initiated by Mr Moeen Qureshi; some are half-baked recommendations of the prime minister’s various Task Forces. Contrary to the propaganda, the prime minister’s three foreign trips were largely PR efforts and yielded rather common dividends. (Turkey, in fact, is hopping mad over the cancellation of the Islamabad-Peshawar highway and needs to be mollified quickly). Two pages are devoted to the government’s accomplishments over Kashmir, notwithstanding the dismal failure of the recent Indo-Pak talks. (“A significant gain” promised the prime minister after the government decided to abandon efforts to censure India in the UN last November; “a small step” clarified foreign secretary Shahryar Khan after the talks concluded.
Some notable initiatives, however, are praiseworthy. Action against a handful of tax defaulters has been taken and rules and regulations relating to overdue loans have been tightened (but comprehensive measures need to be taken on this front). An attempt has been made to pay back some of the victims of the Coops scam (but the gesture is too timid and miserly to attract many kudos). Scores of “Katchi Abadis” have got proprietary rights (but hundreds of thousands of landless Haris haven’t); and a policy of tight money supply and expenditure restraint has stopped inflation from galloping away with our hard-earned savings (but the autonomy of the State Bank has again been curtailed).
A few swallows, though, do not make a full summer. The government is limping along without a full cabinet. Punjab’s administrative structure is in a shambles and crime has gone up. The Sindh government is making no visible efforts to improve “law and order” and dispense with the army. On the one hand, some sensitive appointments (eg DG-IB, Chairman PIB, etc., have raised eyebrows. On the other, the government is inexplicably delaying the appointments of qualified judges to the High Courts. Elections to local bodies are nowhere in sight. And so on. This is no way to run a government.
As a matter of fact, the prevailing perception of the PPP government is not terribly flattering. It is widely described as being timid, indecisive and reactive. One astute diplomat in Islamabad put it quite succinctly: “The government’s leading strategic thinker is Nawaz Sharif”. For once in his life, the PML-N’s Sheikh Rashid spoke the truth when he characterised the Bhutto government’s performance thus: “In 1988 it got into trouble early in the game because of its indecent haste to get things done; now it is asking for trouble by waffling on so many fronts”. Compared to the go-getting Nawaz Sharif and the no-nonsense Moeen Qureshi, Ms Bhutto comes across as a conservative and diffident prime minister in domestic and international circumstances which cry out for exactly the opposite qualities.
Of course, no one would like Ms Bhutto to ape Mr Sharif and become irresponsible and reckless. We also realise that, unlike Mr Qureshi, she is accountable and must build a workable consensus with her coalition partners before she can embark on any radical reforms. Nevertheless, Ms Bhutto can be faulted for squandering her early goodwill by failing to instill a sense of purposefulness about her government.
Part of her problem probably stems from an acute perception of how and why things went awry in her first stint. Once bitten, twice shy, as it were. She is also thwarted in her attempts to build a dynamic team of advisors and ministers by the appalling shortage of competent and efficient representatives in the National Assembly and Senate. But it takes two hands to clap. Ms Bhutto is not a very good listener. She is not the best judge of people. She is often unable to distinguish tactics with strategy. And she seems content to languish in the company of sycophants or weak-willed hangers-on. This will not do. This time she has everything going for her. She should look and act as a real leader.