Rejuvenated NAB sparks ominous whispers
One federal minister clearly confessed to me in his chambers that he had started suspecting the current Chairman NAB.
As usual the National Assembly was late for more than an hour to start meeting Wednesday evening. Yet, Dr Firdous Ashiq Awan was not present to tell “subjects assigned” to her newly established ministry of national regulation and services. Tasnim Qureshi, a state minister, was indeed there to take questions on water and power related issues. But minions working for him could still not find answers to basic questions like the one which simply wanted to know whether Norway had offered Pakistan to generate electricity by sea waves and “if so, the details thereof.”
The arrogant indifference of ministers and laxity of their minions annoyed the opposition legislators and this forced Faisal Karim Kundi to pass censuring remarks.
Notwithstanding the jovial conduct of ministers, one has to add that hardly a member of this assembly has ever been found exercising his or her privilege to extract information on crucial issues of governance during the question hour. By recklessly abandoning this privilege, members of our much-hyped ‘sovereign house’ have failed to emerge as stern monitors of government’s conduct. Their collective and institutional failure in this regard helped non-representative forums like our hyperactive judiciary to fill the vacuum and with a flood of corruption stories every day, the fiercely independent media eventually helped it to appear as the ultimate check on apparently bad governance.
Instead of waking up to visible flaws in their behavior and doing some soul searching to improve it, some ministers reportedly ganged up during the federal cabinet meeting of Wednesday to take on the increasingly high-profile National Accountability Bureau. The ministers believed that during his recent interactions with the media, Admiral (retd) Fasih Bokhari sounded as if vehemently endorsing the perception projected about Pakistan in regard to corrupt practices by Transparency International. They were justified in stressing the point that by affirming the stories of corruption about their government, the NAB Chairman was equipping their potent political rivals with lethal points which they would ruthlessly use to their advantage while campaigning for the next election. A ministerial committee was established by the end of the cabinet meeting to suggest means for damage control.
After exclusively talking to three ministers who were present and vocal in the cabinet meeting of Wednesday, this correspondent could discern that it was not the image of this government that really bothered most cabinet members. What made them more suspicious of recently rejuvenated NAB were ominous whispers that had been preparing us for a government of “able, honest and patriotic technocrats” for around six months. Once installed in the name of holding the next election, this government is expected to somehow stretch its tenure to at least three years “to turn the economy around by taking tough but unpopular decisions.” Of course, “ruthless accountability of the corrupt politicians” is also being projected as another important task for this government.
At least one federal minister clearly confessed to me in his chambers that he had started suspecting the current Chairman NAB. “Although a lie low type naïve,” he claimed, “Admiral Bokhari is now encircled by a cunning and vicious gang of experienced NAB officers. They are telling him that he can carve a place for himself in history by preparing files against various top cats of this government. The interim government after us would love to pounce on those files to get many of us disqualified for contesting the next election. The time of check Bokhari is now or never.”
The panicky delirium of the said minister made me laugh. I could not stop myself from reminding him that none other than the Supreme Court of Pakistan had found the NAB unfit to do a thorough and transparent investigation when it came to the scandal that Malik Riaz had triggered by hurling serious allegations of corruption against Arsalan Iftikhar. Instead of Chairman Bokhari, Shoaib Suddle was rather assigned to probe into the matter in the end.
Published in The Express Tribune, December 13th, 2012.
The arrogant indifference of ministers and laxity of their minions annoyed the opposition legislators and this forced Faisal Karim Kundi to pass censuring remarks.
Notwithstanding the jovial conduct of ministers, one has to add that hardly a member of this assembly has ever been found exercising his or her privilege to extract information on crucial issues of governance during the question hour. By recklessly abandoning this privilege, members of our much-hyped ‘sovereign house’ have failed to emerge as stern monitors of government’s conduct. Their collective and institutional failure in this regard helped non-representative forums like our hyperactive judiciary to fill the vacuum and with a flood of corruption stories every day, the fiercely independent media eventually helped it to appear as the ultimate check on apparently bad governance.
Instead of waking up to visible flaws in their behavior and doing some soul searching to improve it, some ministers reportedly ganged up during the federal cabinet meeting of Wednesday to take on the increasingly high-profile National Accountability Bureau. The ministers believed that during his recent interactions with the media, Admiral (retd) Fasih Bokhari sounded as if vehemently endorsing the perception projected about Pakistan in regard to corrupt practices by Transparency International. They were justified in stressing the point that by affirming the stories of corruption about their government, the NAB Chairman was equipping their potent political rivals with lethal points which they would ruthlessly use to their advantage while campaigning for the next election. A ministerial committee was established by the end of the cabinet meeting to suggest means for damage control.
After exclusively talking to three ministers who were present and vocal in the cabinet meeting of Wednesday, this correspondent could discern that it was not the image of this government that really bothered most cabinet members. What made them more suspicious of recently rejuvenated NAB were ominous whispers that had been preparing us for a government of “able, honest and patriotic technocrats” for around six months. Once installed in the name of holding the next election, this government is expected to somehow stretch its tenure to at least three years “to turn the economy around by taking tough but unpopular decisions.” Of course, “ruthless accountability of the corrupt politicians” is also being projected as another important task for this government.
At least one federal minister clearly confessed to me in his chambers that he had started suspecting the current Chairman NAB. “Although a lie low type naïve,” he claimed, “Admiral Bokhari is now encircled by a cunning and vicious gang of experienced NAB officers. They are telling him that he can carve a place for himself in history by preparing files against various top cats of this government. The interim government after us would love to pounce on those files to get many of us disqualified for contesting the next election. The time of check Bokhari is now or never.”
The panicky delirium of the said minister made me laugh. I could not stop myself from reminding him that none other than the Supreme Court of Pakistan had found the NAB unfit to do a thorough and transparent investigation when it came to the scandal that Malik Riaz had triggered by hurling serious allegations of corruption against Arsalan Iftikhar. Instead of Chairman Bokhari, Shoaib Suddle was rather assigned to probe into the matter in the end.
Published in The Express Tribune, December 13th, 2012.