A Christian and the Punjab PA

Contemptuous, craven and beneath the most elementary standards of basic human dignity. Words fail me when I try to describe the utter moral bankruptcy of the humiliating and disgraceful bow to atavistic hatreds that Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif has just taken.

MPA Kamran Michael was charged with tending the portfolio of finance, after Zulfiqar Khosa of Dera Ghazi Khan found the responsibility too demanding and too thankless for his political tastes. Michael had bravely taken the responsibility to manage the swashbuckling finances of Sharif’s provincial government, but a segment of the party objected to his presenting the budget speech before the provincial assembly, saying that a Christian should not be handed this honour. And now the highest elected official of the province, the chief minister himself, has given these atavistic hatreds his own stamp of approval by bowing to these demands.

Meanwhile, the state of the province’s finances will be indifferent to the religious beliefs of the man making the speech, it’s safe to assume. A deficit will remain a deficit, irrespective of whether the speech is being made by a Muslim or a Christian. The expectations of the federal government that the province will end the fiscal year with a surplus will be dashed irrespective. The continued hope of the federal government that the provinces between them will yield a surplus of another Rs125 billion — the lion’s share of which must come from Punjab — at the end of the next fiscal year will be unaffected by questions of faith and salvation.

Indifferent also will be the state of the province’s preparation to assume charge of all the ministries that are being devolved down to it under the 18th Amendment. The responsibility to deliver basic social protections and basic social services, like running hospitals and schools and universities, is about to land like a plum in the lap of the provincial government, and we will look to see how well the government of Punjab has prepared itself to assume these charges.

What ideas does the PML-N have in these areas? What ideas for advancing social protections and basic services? Will they eschew all foreign assistance in the forthcoming budget to mark their protest against the whole world and all of mankind? Or will they dutifully fill in the line in the budget that says “estimates of foreign receipts”? Budget-making is always a delicate exercise of selecting priorities. We’ll see soon enough what ideas the PML-N is going to select for official patronage in its budget, but going by what we have already seen, it appears that the PML-N has selective courage, selective convictions and selective criteria for party membership. There are the privileged party members, and then there are the second-class party members who can never be allowed public honours.

The party’s selective courage has been on display in the budget debate unfolding in the National Assembly. One of its most respected and most erudite MNAs, Khwaja Asif, whose character and integrity are unblemished, has delivered a powerful and courageous speech in the National Assembly, holding the army and its generals accountable for absorbing vast amounts of taxpayer funds but not being able to perform in the battlefield. It took real mettle to take on the khaki powers of this country, to call them out by name and compare them to the soft and luxury-afflicted commanders of the late Mughal era.

But can we expect Khwaja Asif, with all due respect, to please share his opinion about this shameful episode where a minority MPA has been disallowed from performing his public duty simply on grounds of his faith? Do sovereignty and rights not spring from the same philosophical soil? For what would the respected MNA from Sialkot wrench the country back from the generals? To hand it over to these atavistic hatreds instead? Can he tell us what opinion the early Mughal generals, that he lionised in his speech before the National Assembly, held of the clerical establishment, and how they dealt with the bearded voices of exclusion and hate?

Like I said, words fail me. I’m hoping saner voices within the PML-N can find the language for the moment.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 9th, 2011.