PRESIDENT Dr Arif Alvi says development in society is possible only with better governance and elimination of corruption. Addressing the graduation ceremony of senior government officials at the National School of Public Policy in Lahore on Friday, he stressed upon the government officers to exhibit exemplary roles in the society. The President said instead of depending on other countries, we have to struggle for self-sufficiency.
There is no denying the fact that Pakistan has the potential to become prosperous provided there is consistent focus on good governance and elimination of corruption. As bureaucracy is the implementation tool of the state policies and programmes, its standards and quality matters much but regrettably its performance and output is not up to the mark. It is rightly said that the bureaucracy did exceedingly well in responding to the overwhelming challenges that the country faced in its initial years. It was because of the robust governance architecture, professional competence and meticulous planning and development that the extraordinary social and economic performance in the 1960s was acknowledged as a model for replication elsewhere in the developing world. However, then things changed and deterioration started because of political interference, corruption, falling standards of induction and training and favouritism. Regrettably, the successive governments played havoc with a well-established system of governance and service delivery like the failed experiment by the then President Pervez Musharraf that ruined the civil administrative structure in the name of so-called reforms. There are, therefore, legitimate demands to revitalize bureaucracy as an effective institution to conduct public affairs strictly on merit irrespective of who rules the country. A genuine process of accountability is also the need of the hour as the existing one is accused of becoming a tool of victimization.
