Domestic agendas in foreign lands

Letter August 03, 2015
Pakistan may be the only country whose leaders discuss their internal administrative matters in foreign lands

KARACHI: Pakistan may be the only country in the world whose leaders prefer to discuss their internal administrative matters by calling a meeting of state officials in foreign lands. Pakistan may also be the only country where this practice is considered kosher and no questions are asked about who foots the bill for these junkets.

In the last week of July 2015, two citizens of Karachi decided to break this stony silence by writing to the chief minister and the chief secretary of Sindh seeking information under the Sindh Freedom of Information Act of 2006 and Article 19A of the Constitution. In their joint application, they argued that it was the right of every citizen to seek information from any government functionary, especially on matters relating to the use of official funds. The request for information sought facts and records relating to the visit of the Sindh chief minister, ministers, parliamentarians and other government officials who visited the UAE between January 2010 and today, for attending meetings related to the affairs of Sindh, party meetings or other individual or collective meetings with party leaders. The applicants requested that the information for all such individuals may be provided under the following heads: name of individual, date and duration of each visit to the UAE for the above-mentioned reasons, expenses incurred on each visit (to include air travel, road travel, boarding, lodging and hotel expenses in the UAE), government budget head under which expenses were paid for and clarification if any individual paid expenses from his/her own pocket or if the expenses were paid for by the political party. While the applicants are hopeful, most others have termed this accountability exercise a waste of time by a bunch of dreamy idealists. Can one hope that the eternal chief minister of Sindh and his chief secretary would not disappoint the applicants, follow the law and state the truth?

Naeem Sadiq

Published in The Express Tribune, August 4th,  2015.

Like Opinion & Editorial on Facebook, follow @ETOpEd on Twitter to receive all updates on all our daily pieces.