‘Missing’ photo of sole Christian deputy NA speaker displayed

ISLAMABAD:

C E Gibbon was ‘missing’ until Tuesday. But the National Assembly Secretariat finally displayed the photograph of Pakistan’s third deputy speaker and the only Christian to hold the office, in its gallery.

“Gibbon’s photograph has been displayed in the gallery,” announced National Assembly Speaker Sardar Ayaz Sadiq on Tuesday, while expressing gratitude to Asia Nasir, Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-Fazl’s (JUI-F) minorities’ representative, who had pointed it out to him earlier.

“It took us some time as we had to enlarge the only photo of Gibbon,” Speaker Sadiq said. In response, Nasir said, “I am really grateful for the prompt action.”

Gibbon was a member of the Second Constituent Assembly from Lahore and had remained in office from August 12, 1955 to October 7, 1958.

The lower house of parliament was in the middle of a discussion over the twin suicide blasts the All Saints’ Church, Peshawar, when Asia Nasir mentioned that the photo of a Christian deputy speaker had been missing from the gallery but the speaker had it placed.

“I had pointed it out when the photo gallery was inaugurated by former National Assembly Speaker Fehmida Mirza,” Nasir told The Express Tribune.

However, an official at the NA Secretariat said, “We explored the national archives for the photograph but only found low resolution and bad pictures. We were looking for better ones.”

Another official said, “We had been looking for the photo for quite some time and today it was finally displayed. It did not happen all of a sudden,” he added.

Author Ahmed Salim, in his book Role of Minorities in Nation Building with Focus on Karachi, noted that CE Gibbon had appeared before the Punjab Boundary Commission, and had requested that the Christian population be counted as part of Pakistan.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 25^th, 2013.