THE law minister in a parliamentary government, though a politician and a party man, is expected to be less partisan than other ministers.

His advice must conform to the law. That is why the secretary of the ministry is invariably a judge. If the advice a law minister tenders doesn't suit the interest of the party or lend support to the contemplated executive action, it is for the prime minister or chief minister or the cabinet to deviate from the law or give it a contrary interpretation. In any event, the law minister must not act as political spokesman of the government much less publicly defend its legally suspect or improper actions. That is, if at all, the information minister's job.

In the background of this principle, the Punjab's coalition government presents a spectacle which one finds alternately entertaining and disgusting. The province's law minister Rana Sanaullah is not just a spokesman but a gladiator for the PML-N — the senior partner in the coalition. Finding no one in its ranks to match him, junior partner PPP summons the federal law minister, Babar Awan, to its aid.

The gladiatorial contest between the two law ministers, now almost a daily feature, is marked by vitriol and pun that are rare even in Pakistan's acrimonious politics. Both of them claim to speak for Pakistan's biggest province amid human misery caused by floods and inflation at a scale not seen before and heap ridicule on each other.

Rana Sanaullah's target is the governor of his own province, that of Babar Awan the chief minister.

Both appear unmindful of the fact that the administration of the province is their joint responsibility. A simple parliamentary solution would be for the PPP to withdraw from the coalition or the chief minister to remove its ministers. If the PML-N is unable to form a government on its own or with the help of some other party, the chief minister should advise the governor to dissolve the assembly and call for fresh polls.

But, seemingly, it suits both parties to suffer each other in power rather than risk going back to the people. That is also generally true of coalition politics at the centre and in the other three provinces. President Zardari may call it 'national reconciliation' but it is little more than political appeasement at the cost of the common man must pay heavily to sustain ever-expanding but ineffective governments.

The main victim of this so-called reconciliation is law and order that is at its worst in Karachi. The burning public policy issue of the day in Punjab, however, is a proposal to constitute a board of governors in selected colleges which is being opposed by the PPP. The demonstrating students and teachers were dispersed by force when Babar Awan jumped into the fray to assure them that the PPP and the federal government stood behind them and would never allow, as he was quoted by the press, the “grabbing of educational institutions like sugar, foundry and poultry”.

Besides prompting the teachers and students to confront the administration on the streets rather than negotiate across the table, Mr Awan seemed to suggest that the colleges managed by the boards would pass under the control of the chief minister's clan. That could be dismissed as rhetoric but the pertinent question is why the law minister and not the education minister of the federation or the PPP chief of the province should put forth the federal government's view. Further, why foment trouble rather than convey the concerns to the provincial government and discuss?

A federal minister, that too of law, instigating violence in a province to settle personal or party scores is reprehensible. Moreover, it is nothing short of bizarre for Mr Awan to suggest that the board of governors would make the colleges a property of the Sharif family like their foundries and sugar mills. The argument should centre on the point whether the standards of education and discipline would improve or fall. In that the weight of common sense and experience lies on the side of the board of governors.

The boards working under the policy supervision of the provincial government is a halfway house between government control and privatisation. It would surely lead to a modest improvement in standards without an increase in the fees providing the boards are not packed by crooks or cronies. Remarkable improvement in some Lahore colleges that were placed under the boards can be quoted in support. Lahore's F.C. College is an example of the success of privatisation. But the fee must go up for investment in infrastructure and higher salaries for qualified teachers.

An appropriate example of the government's stranglehold is Rabwah's community college which was heading towards becoming a post-graduate research centre when it was nationalised. Since then, it has been reduced to all but rubble.

The teachers with Ph.D in the sciences were transferred by the government to distant colleges where science, if at all, was taught as an elementary subject. A local board would not have acted so preposterously.

Nevertheless, government-owned educational institutions including teaching hospitals must remain in existence for the vast majority who cannot pay high fees. Yet they must seek support of the philanthropic private sector to improve the quality of their instructions and patient care.

The governing boards formed for the teaching hospitals in the last regime were stillborn in Sindh but making headway in Punjab until they faltered during Nawaz Sharif's government which chose to assert government control.

The essential point to note is that a local board can tackle problems better than a distant government but for improving standards, funds from the private sector must supplement government allocations that leave little for students or patients after salaries are paid. Karachi's Sindh Institute of Urology and Transplantation is a good example of government ownership, autonomous management and private philanthropy combining to make it the envy of all private institutions and yet remaining accessible to the poor.

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