Nisar’s outburst against electoral body’s bureaucrats

Fakhro Bhai is there to ensure free, fair, impartial elections, as far as they are reasonably possible in Pakistan.

Through his column for the op-ed pages of this newspaper Wednesday morning, Ziauddin Sahib had tried to explain about how a group of the so-called career officers of the Election Commission was pushing their Chairman, Fakhurruddin G Ebrahim, to potentially embarrassing situations. I could not imagine that the issue he had discussed was destined to explode in the national assembly, hardly a few hours after printing of his piece.

As the leader of the opposition in the national assembly, Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan had proposed the name of its current Chairman that the government instantly accepted with the clear intent of generating the feel-good mood about holding of the next election. After taking the floor of the national assembly Wednesday, however, the same Nisar sounded as if deliberately provoked to take on the doings of some bureaucrats working for the Election Commission.

Before coming to his personal issue, he spoke on and on to build the narrative that a definite section of media had been projecting all politicians as “a bunch of fake degree holders, compulsive tax evaders and fraudsters.” Anti-democracy forces, he alleged, took full advantage of this negative projection. It also helped Imran Khan and his party to rise and rise. That also created space for a ‘non state actor’ –Qadri – who suddenly arrived in Pakistan from Canada to dictate to the Election Commission about how to conduct the next election.

With contemptuous anger, Nisar kept insisting that a group of bureaucrats working for the Election Commission is dancing to the tunes set by Imran Khan and Qadri. “They keep coming up with novel ideas and proposals for holding the next election.” All in the name of doing vigilant scrutiny of the credentials of potential candidates to the next election.

To prove the point he read the full text of a letter that Sanaullah Malik, a director of the Election Commission, had written to him late last week. Nisar was justified in claiming that the language of the said letter was “offensive and incriminating.” Through the same, Nisar was given two weeks to submit documents to prove that he had passed his Secondary and High Secondary School exams. In clear words, this graduate of the world-renowned Government College of Lahore and a Masters degree holder from the Quaid-e-Azam University was asked to submit his Matric and FA certificate. By not submitting the desired documents by the due dates, Nisar had also been threatened to get ready for facing the “criminal charges against a fake degree holder.”

After reading full text of the said letter, the proud Rajput from Chakri began furiously wondering as to how a petty bureaucrat could use such “humiliating language while addressing a public representative, without realizing that whatever strength that the Election Commission savours these days was granted to it by this parliament.” Nisar’s delirium was firmly endorsed with spirited desk thumping from all sides of the house and I could instantly feel that coming closer to the next election “our parliamentarians” were set to furnish some checks to nip the self-righteous schemes for regulating politicians, simmering in the minds of some Election Commission bureaucrats.

This self-righteous bench is bound to embarrass the Chief Election Commissioner by writing such letters to people like Nisar. Before embarking on the mission of cleansing Pakistan’s polity, as Nisar had correctly recalled, someone should please tell them that not all students are required to sit in exams for Matric and F.A., before graduating from a college in Pakistan or abroad. Before moving up to studying for graduation, a fairly large number prefer to sit for O and A level exams. As a student of the elitist Aitchisan College of Lahore, Nisar had done the same. It is just not possible for him to prove that he had done his “matriculation.”

I refuse to believe that Nisar expressed his fury so explosively in the House Wednesday, only to protect his skin. He had been getting elected to all the national assemblies that came and went in this country since 1985. His instincts are too attuned to smell the games that extra-parliamentary forces compulsively play to “command and control” the stubbornly autonomous politicians of Pakistan. Hardened types like Nisar seriously feel that the same forces were now doing everything to prevent holding of the next election on time. Through their pious-sounding allies in both the electronic and the print media, these forces have already prepared the public to demand a strict ethical-check of those intending to participate in the coming elections. The clique working for the same forces at the Election Commission continues to draw the censoring powers on the same grounds. Fakhro Bhai is there to ensure free, fair and impartial elections, as far as they are reasonably possible in a country like Pakistan. He must not turn into a helpless tool of the forces setting an insidious game with noble-looking intentions.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 21^st, 2013.