The recent revelation that a CEO of a state-owned enterprise (SOE) amassed a staggering Rs355 million in salary, bonuses, and benefits has ignited a firestorm of public outrage. This outrage is not only understandable but necessary.

The stewardship of public funds is a sacred trust, and when that trust is violated, the public has every right to demand answers and accountability.

In response, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s constitution of a high-level committee to review the governance of all SOEs is a commendable and decisive step. However, in the fervent search for culprits, a dangerous and factually inaccurate narrative has emerged—one that mistakenly vilifies the State-Owned Enterprises (Governance and Operations) Act, 2023 (SOE Act) as the enabler of this excess.

This misdiagnosis is a critical error that, if left unchallenged, risks sabotaging Pakistan’s most significant governance reform in decades, allowing the true culprits — the opaque and antiquated systems of the past — to escape scrutiny.

The entire debate must be anchored by one incontrovertible fact: the CEO in question was appointed in 2022. The SOE Act, however, came into full force on February 2, 2023. To attribute the governance failures that led to this appointment, the negotiation of its terms, and the subsequent approval of its extravagant perks directly to the SOE Act is not a matter of differing opinions; it is a fundamental chronological error.

This case is not a failure of the new law; it is a stark and painful exhibit of the very culture of impunity and weak oversight the Act was meticulously drafted to dismantle. It is a ghost from the past, haunting the present just as reforms begin to take hold.

To fully appreciate why blaming the Act is misguided, one must understand the governance environment it was designed to replace. Prior to 2023, the landscape of Pakistan’s SOEs was fundamentally different. The appointment of CEOs was........

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