The apex courts directive to the Punjab government regarding shoulder promotions might just be limited to the police department but it is an ailment that afflicts many other departments of the province as well. This is a result not of the peculiarities of the various cadres of the civil service in the Punjab but of the rather particular style of governance by the current dispensation. The Punjab ruling partys penchant for promoting blue-eyed boys out of turn causes resentment not just in the case of the police (the Supreme Courts judgment in this particular case was the result of a complaint by 34 SPs) but also in various departments throughout the province. The principal civil administrator for the capital city, for instance, is an example.
The problems with the provinces civil service are on several levels. First of all, the bureaucracy is, for all practical purposes, running the Punjab. The empowerment of the civil servants as opposed to the elected representatives is one of the defining features of the current regime. The CMs preference for micromanaging issues, keeping multiple portfolios and running the government through task forces necessitate a bureaucracy more empowered than it should be. A running joke in the secretariat, back when the PPP was still in the Punjab government: who is lesser empowered in the Punjab cabinet than the PPP ministers? The answer: PML(N) ministers. The performer in a one-man show has to have assistants, not other acts.
A culture of political favourites arises whenever there are rules to be broken; pliant officers are needed. The casual violation of the letter of the law needs to be highlighted here. The shoulder promotions of many officers is only one such case. There are many smaller ones that are not reported. In a much publicised road infrastructure project in Lahore, for instance, the relevant urban agencies have not been taken on board. Two medical colleges, in another example, were inaugurated by the CM without the health department contacting the federal body that regulates medical education.
One mans word should not be law.
