Editorial: The Express Tribune - 05 June 2013

Leaked secrets


The trial of US army intelligence analyst, the diminutive, bespectacled Bradley Manning, 25, is one that will be watched closely from around the world. Manning has already admitted that while posted in Iraq, he had passed on thousands of documents to the anti-secrecy website, Wikileaks, founded by Julian Assange, who currently remains a virtual prisoner at the Ecuadorian embassy in London. It is said that the US is also keen to try Assange in a case involving the largest-ever leakage of military information in its history.
The case, being heard at the heavily secured Fort Meade military installation in Maryland, raises some very delicate questions, pitching the issue of military security — which all nations do indeed consider vital — against the right of the people to know the truth. The leaked papers did indeed give us a startling insight into the world of US foreign policy and revealed a great deal about how it is shaped. Manning’s lawyer says that the young man was confused and wished to put the truth before the American people, including the killing of civilians by troops. The prosecution says, he delivered information straight into the hands of al Qaeda, jeopardising security.
The affair, of course, divides people, not only in the US but also around the world. The issue of national security interests, as opposed to the right to know, is an extremely emotive affair. The decision of The New York Times and the Guardian to publish the leaks also, in some ways, upset the age-old concept of media ethics. Manning’s supporters are already claiming he will not receive a fair trial. They have been pointing to steps taken by the US military, such as being forced to turn their ‘truth’ t-shirts inside out before entering the court to follow proceedings. It will have to be seen which way things go. But the whole matter has certainly thrown light on just how covertly and secretly states act, telling quite a different story to people while acting in a completely different fashion. The Wikileaks controversy has brought this out into the public and exposed a great deal that the US would have preferred never be known. This can surely not be a bad thing for the world in the long term.
 
Tackling the energy crisis

It has been obvious for, at least, five years now that the subsidies given by the government on electricity have grown beyond any reasonable limits. But, perhaps, the scale of the waste being perpetuated has not been fully understood. The report that over half the subsidies being paid out are essentially covering the cost of theft and people not paying their bills should be an outrage to law-abiding citizens who pay their taxes and bills on time. Sadly, it appears that there are too few of such citizens in Pakistan.
While it is apparent that electricity tariffs must be increased from their current levels to cover the full cost of generation, transmission and distribution, no solution to the energy problem can be achieved without addressing the problem of theft. To this end, an approach that relies on discriminating between areas where most customers pay their bills and those areas where most do not would be a rational approach to incentivise good behaviour on the part of electricity consumers.
This model has already been successfully applied by the Karachi Electric Supply Company with remarkable results that have reduced power cuts to nearly zero in about half the area of the country’s financial capital. An application of this model, particularly in regions like Punjab, which have very low and concentrated levels of theft, would be a boon to electricity supply in the province that has been among the worst hit by the energy crisis.
Why this has not already happened is a testament to the government’s adhoc approach to policymaking in the energy sector. Originally, the government created 10 separate electricity distribution companies as a means of ensuring the ability to crack down on theft and inefficiency. It was a good idea, but the transition was never fully completed, with all of these companies remaining under a single government bureaucracy, largely because the civil servants in charge in Islamabad did not want to give up their powers. For the lights in Pakistan to come back on, it is necessary that the government serve its people, not the bureaucrats.