MEC Report on Competence & Patronage in Senior Appointments in Badakhshan, 2016

The Afghan government is required by law to appoint people to positions on the basis ofcompetence and merit. However, this is widely not the case at present. MEC is examining the extent of this problem, and has commenced with examining the situation in a single province, Badakhshan. MEC discussed the question of patronage with many people in Badakhshan during their visit in July 2016. The opinion of most people – from ordinary citizens to high officials – was that all, or almost all, of the senior government positions in the Province were filled on the basis of patronage. Making progress in reducing patronage is a central element of the government’s drive to improve performance, and to reduce corruption. It is therefore hugely important to monitor competence/patronage in government positions, so that everyone can see whether the situation is improving or worsening over time. Responding to this need, MEC has been working to create an indicator of this, and this report is the first result. MEC has created a new indicator: "CorP % in officials’ appointments" In dari: Rawabet Ya Zawabet dar Estikhdam Moqamat. ‘C’ is the number of positions that appear to be filled on the basis of technical competence. ‘P’ is the number of positions that appear to be filled on the basis of patronage. MEC evaluated this percentage for the top 100 officials in the province. All the anecdotal evidence was that the CorP% would be very low, maybe 10%, meaning that 90% would appear to have been filled on the basis of patronage. In fact, the result is that the ‘CorP %’ for Badakhshan is 31%. This means that 31% of the 100 most senior officials in Badakhshan are perceived to be in position on the basis of their technical competence. It means that 69% are perceived to be in place because of patronage. The result is a big surprise. The percentage is not good, but it is significantly better than the anecdotal evidence suggested. MEC has looked at the result to see if it may be biased – with people falsely claiming that a position was based on competence when in fact it was based on patronage. We do not think this to be the case, because most of the ‘competence’ positions were supported by the opinion of civil society, who are unlikely to be biased this way. MEC also looked at the CorP% just among the district police chiefs (31 district police chiefs, out of them are perceived to be in place because of technical competence. The main reason is perceived to be due to improper influence from Members of Parliament. MEC attempted to corroborate this perceptions analysis by accessing documentary sources, notably the recruitment files at IDLG and at Police Headquarters. However, this was not possible, because access to the files of the recruitment process for each individual was not permitted. Such metrics are highly valuable, as they provide a baseline from which future improvement – or decline - can be measured. Such a metric is not absolute – it is always open to questioning – and MEC will seek to improve the methodology as the analysis is applied more widely in the country.