Khawaja Asif delivers dose of deadly cynicism

Nusrat Javeed

ISLAMABAD:

Actively participating in National Assembly proceedings from 1993 to 1996, Khawaja Asif had emerged as the most devastating whistleblower. With the obsessive drive of an investigative journalist, he cultivated sources in the innermost circles of the second Benazir Bhutto-led government. He and his ‘deep throats’ would often meet in the dark and deserted streets of Islamabad. Many senior officers also used to ‘drop’ for-eyes-only type material for him like the imaginative spies of John Le Carre’s Cold War-based thrillers.

Yet the accountability boys of General Pervez Musharraf opted to prove Asif corrupt after the military takeover of October 1999. Totally disconnected from his near and dear ones, this born jovial from Sialkot was put in filthy dungeons for many months. Forced to keep awake, he endured non-stop and late-night sessions of rigorous interrogation. In the end, however, none other than the accountability czar of those days, General Amjad, ordered his release with tendering public apology for the pain and humiliation inflicted upon the person and family of Khawaja Asif.

He did succeed in returning to the National Assembly through the elections of 2002, but kept himself mostly aloof from its business.

Asif’s friends and admirers seriously believe that he had lost ‘IT’ during the torturous days of General Musharraf. Probably, they are right. He is one of the most experienced members of the National Assembly sitting on the opposition benches these days, but seldom shows interest in parliamentary business. But, Thursday proved an exception.

After managing the permission to speak on a point of order, Khawaja Asif was lethal while mockingly wondering as to why some leading ministers of this government were protesting too much over a statement of NAB chairman. During a television interview, Admiral (Retd) Fasih Bokhari had sounded as if endorsing the perception, spread by Transparency International that on average seven to eight billion rupees a day were pocketed by the corrupt cartels in Pakistan.

Most ministers had preferred to focus on this statement of the NAB chief during the cabinet meeting of Wednesday. Interacting with media, including this correspondent, some of these ministers also claimed in furious whispers that Bokhari was perhaps pursuing an “insidious agenda.” After lying low for many months, he had decided to speak too close to the next election with the “clear intent of finding a high profile role in the interim government that needs to be put for holding the next election.” Islamabad has been rife with conspiratorial whispers which claim that some formidable elements of the ‘deep state’ are diligently pursuing the idea of stretching the tenure of the interim government-to-be under the garb of doing “ruthless accountability of the corrupt politicians.”

Asif was indeed justified in cynically wondering as to why some federal ministers were being so loud in censoring the NAB chairman in public. “After all, Bokhari was appointed by their government on the recommendation of Malik Riaz. Ask Malik Riaz to sort things out with NAB chairman, if you feel unhappy with him. Don’t drag the National Assembly as a party in your in-house tussles.”

With tone, tenor and wordings of a budding ‘statesman,’ Syed Khurshid Shah made desperate attempts to make Khawaja Asif and the rest of legislators realise that “the spread of unsubstantiated stories of corruption against the present government were in effect damaging the collective reputation of elected politicians” and usual suspects of the power games in this country could take advantage of it in the end.

His pleas didn’t invoke any mercy, however, and Khawaja Asif got away with deadly cynicism.

The crafty Syed from Sukkur was rather sounding doubly hallow after a fiery intervention by Jamshed Dasti. Speaking on a point of order, this ruling party member from Muzaffargarh had named Dr Asim for not being able to address the crisis-like shortage of CNG for public and private vehicles. Dasti did not stop there. He also named the managing director of a government-run company dealing with oil supplies and repeatedly alleged that he was a “dual nationality holder” and exclusively responsible for patronising a mafia that survived and thrived by stealing oil and gas supplied to northern parts of Pakistan via pipelines. I can only wish that instead of wasting his steam in countering Khawaja Asif, Khurshid Shah had shown the courage to promise for establishing a National Assembly committee to probe into the allegations that Dasti had hurled in the house with so much confidence.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 14^th, 2012.