Why not put up a forceful defence of the ECP?

ISLAMABAD:

Dr Asim Hussein is not a mere minister just sitting in the largest cabinet of Pakistan’s political history without having any power at his disposal. For being one of the bosom pals of President Asif Ali Zardari, he rather relishes enviable influence in the policy planning process of the federal government.

The same Dr Asim shocked me, though, while meekly admitting on the floor of the National Assembly on Thursday that the law covering the Oil and Gas Regulatory Authority (Ogra), which this government inherited five years ago, is embedded with many flaws. Thanks to inherited lacunas, many top ranking officials of the said authority often endure the pain and humiliation of a “witch hunt.”

He did not name any ‘victim’ of the presumed witch hunt. Sitting in the press gallery all reporters instantly discerned that the minister of petroleum was explicitly referring to a high profile case of the former Ogra chairman, Tauqir Sadiq. The Supreme Court is adamantly pushing the NAB to get him arrested in the UAE and bring him back to Pakistan to face serious charges of malpractice and reckless corruption.

I was doubly shocked when the crowded benches of the PML-N indifferently swallowed the story that Dr Asim continued spinning, almost audaciously, without ado. Even Khawaja Asif didn’t seem interested to check Dr Asim.

This very vocal member of the opposition had been petroleum minister immediately after the 2008 election, when the PML-N decided to join the coalition government led by the PPP. For sure, Asif’s party pulled its nominees out of the government after some weeks, but even after quitting the ministry of petroleum, he kept a vigilant eye on happenings there. He took the lead in subverting the idea of SOS addressing of the issue of electricity shortage by installing Rental Power Projects (RPPs). Eventually, Makhdom Faisal Saleh Hayat of the PML-Q also joined him in this crusade against the same idea. Both of them ended up before the Supreme Court and took full credit for creating a mega scandal to bleed the image of the PPP-led government.

There is no doubt that in the haste of introducing ‘modern management’ in Pakistan, General Pervez Musharraf and his sycophant technocrats invented a record number of regulatory bodies, which were presumed to deliver over and above the ‘bureaucratic rut and lethargy.” Instead of putting the country on a fast track to economic development, however, these bodies ended up as fiefdoms of few slavish cronies of the military dictator. Savouring their “autonomous status” to the hilt, these cronies would seldom care listening to their ‘parent ministries.’ They habitually treated public representatives and elected bodies with contempt.

After taking turns in four governments that succeeded each other from 1988 to 1999, both the PML-N and the PPP were fully aware of the true worth of these bodies. After massively elected to legislative forums through the election of 2008, it was the responsibility of their members to furnish checks on these bodies. None of their legislators ever bothered, however.

The opposition members rather preferred to approach the Supreme Court to check the real or alleged corruption, rampant at bodies like OGRA. The practice made them media stars and the government continued to act like a helpless victim of “political point scoring and hyper judicial activism”.

Thanks to nonstop resorting to this habit of egging on the Supreme Court to oversee day-to-day governance, both the government and the opposition had fully exposed the true worth of the legislative bodies, while heading towards another election. They seem arrogantly oblivious to the reality that an average Pakistani has now started identifying democracy and its elected tools with reckless corruption.

Instead of engaging in some serious soul-searching while completing the five-year term of the democratic process, most politicians prefer playing games. Far more pathetic in the said context are some weighty ‘allies’ of the present government and Chaudhrys of Gujrat have taken the lead. After skillfully facilitating Qadri from Canada to stage a massive show for good governance in Islamabad, the PML-Q leaders are now too willing to find ways of joining him, formally. By sending Shah Mehmood Qureshi and Javed Hashmi to meet Qadri the other day, Imran Khan has also conceded a lead role to him for “ensuring free and fair elections that lead us to good government.” And Qadri has now approached the Supreme Court to do an “effective cleansing” of the Election Commission that both the government and the opposition had established while tediously fulfilling demands set by the Constitution through the 20th amendment. Instead of putting up a forceful defence of the Election Commission that no one else but our elected representatives had established, both the PPP and the PML-N are shamelessly letting the non-elected characters and institutions to usurp the power management scene.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 8^th, 2013.