Suspended lawmakers

Our lawmakers have a strange affliction that leads them to believe that they are above the law. It should go without saying that the opposite needs to be true. Those entrusted with the responsibility to formulate the nation’s laws and spend its monies need to be purer than Caesar’s wife. The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) has suspended over 200 members of the National Assembly, Senate and provincial legislatures for failing to declare their assets. The list includes, ironically enough, Finance Minister Abdul Hafiz Sheikh, the man responsible for stewarding the nation’s financial health. Other luminaries on the list are Interior Minister Rehman Malik and Senate Leader of the Opposition Maulana Ghafoor Haideri.

The suspensions on their own don’t mean much. The ECP has previously suspended members for a nominal day or two, a punishment that does not come anywhere close to meeting the crime. For ECP laws to have teeth, repeat offenders should face much stiffer penalties, up to losing their seats. The ECP has rightly decreed that the public has a right to know the assets of their representatives; those who refuse to abide by this are abusing the voters’ trust and the responsibility entrusted to them. That lawmakers feels, correctly as it is happens, that they can flout rules at will only leads to further flouting of regulations. When lawmakers consider themselves above the law, it makes a mockery of our democratic system where everyone is theoretically supposed to be equal in the eyes of the law.

Even though many of our lawmakers find the simple filing of assets a burden too hard to bear, this should only be the start of the process. Too many of the asset declarations have only a tenuous connection to reality. If they are too be believed, those who serve in the national and provincial assemblies are living in penury, even as they drive in fancy cars and have multiple homes. For the asset declarations to have any meaning, they need to be verified for accuracy with severe punishments for those found to have presented falsified information. Not only will that give us more honest assemblies, it will also give tax authorities the information to collect unpaid dues from those in power.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 23^rd, 2011.