The unfinished business of naming caretakers

Deputy Speaker Faisal Karim Kundi felt very agitated when he had to take the presidential chair in a near-deserted house even after waiting for more than 80 minutes.

Sharing his discomfort with chief whip Khurshid Shah, he asked him how to ensure respectable attendance to start the National Assembly proceedings as scheduled.

An otherwise sharp-witted Syed from Sukkur had no answer.

Kundi, no doubt, is a novice on parliamentary business, but Khurshid Shah knows everything about it. He needs no tutor to realise that most of our politicians hate to work and focus. Their attention span turns dull after sunset.

The government can still furnish some interest and vigor to house proceedings, only if sittings were held in the day time. Most members will vie for a chance to speak on the floor, only to see their names mentioned in tickers running on the screens of 24/7 channels in this case.

Khurshid Shah, however, is far more stuck in delivering a laborious assignment these days. The president and the prime minister have deputed him to seek consensus on two crucially relevant issues. One, of course, is related to setting up the interim government for holding the next elections. But the immediate task is to reach an agreement on a radically revamped law to facilitate a judicious process of accountability.

In the name of punishing corrupt politicians, the accountability czars of Ghulam Ishaq Khan, Nawaz Sharif and General Pervez Musharraf had in effect been sorting out defiant politicians since the 1990s. The PPP-led coalition did not follow the same practice, for sure. In a way, it rather provided relief to the persons hounded by the previous governments for the right or wrong reasons.

Yet, the credibility of the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) was finally eroded when it came to probing allegations that a real estate tycoon of dubious reputation hawked against the son of the hyper-active Chief Justice of Pakistan. The Supreme Court eventually decided that it could not trust NAB for doing an unquestionably fair investigation in this matter. A retired police officer, Dr Suddle, had now been assigned to do the same.

One seriously wonders as to how NAB continues working as usual after the said decision. Why should an average Pakistani suffer its sleuths and investigators if the highest court of this country does not trust it?

Disregarding the questions triggered by the case of Arsalan Iftikhar, Khurshid Shah is trying hard to make the PML-N understand that the PPP-led government was about to finish its term.

It is time to get a new government after holding fresh elections and here is the rub. Off and on, whispers in Islamabad start feverishly preparing us for a government of ‘honest, able and patriotic technocrats’. Although established for holding fair elections, the said government can extend its term in the name of ‘ruthless accountability’ to convince people that this time around, they will be electing from the lot of appropriately vetted, clean politicians.

Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan is just not willing to listen to fears that a government of technocrats with the possibility of stretching its tenure in the name of accountability remains a viable option that extra-parliamentary forces can install to frustrate politicians. Ishaq Dar is more fearful on this count and so is Nawaz Sharif. With a dispassionate mindset, both Dar and Khurshid Shah are willing to think and eventually agree on a comprehensive law to regulate the accountability business in a credible manner.

Both of them truthfully told journalists that during their meeting the name of the possible caretaker prime minister had not been discussed. Some names have already been conveyed to the PPP via informal means and of course Senator Raza Rabbani’s name is included in the list.

The PPP has to make the next move, but these days its leaders are more interested in reaching a long term deal with the MQM on the issue of local government.

In this space, I have already explained that people at the helm of national security affairs are important stakeholders when it comes to seeking consensus for the caretaker prime minister.

No wonder, Muhammadmain Soomro, the caretaker prime minister in 2008, is being reported to have discreetly landed in Karachi to weigh his chances. I was not surprised when someone named Justice (retd) Amirulmulk Mengal of Balochistan in the same context.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 7^th, 2012.