Hajj fiasco — the last nail?

The post-scam strategy of the government has been equally smelly and damage control has met with<br /> damage enhancement.

The Hajj scam 2010 has come to a head in Pakistan and its first arrest has come in the shape of the handing over of Joint Secretary of Ministry for Religious Affairs Raja Aftabul Islam to the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA). Other bigwigs from the ministry are sure to follow. Religious Affairs Minister Hamid Saeed Kazmi has quite understandably come in for a lot of flak on TV channels because he let his ministry allegedly defraud the poor Hajis of the country and kept denying any wrongdoing when he should have stood aside from it at the first whiff of corruption.

Out of the approximate 150,000 pilgrims who go for Hajj from Pakistan, 60 per cent opt for Hajj through the official channel, a task the governments have been performing for the past over half a century. An average of Rs 250,000 is the expense if one takes the official route, and more than double if one opts to do Hajj on one’s own. It is the poor, with little or no savings, who make up the bulk of the pilgrims. Their devotion is touching because under Islam they are not obligated to perform the ritual in conditions of poverty.

The Supreme Court correctly took a suo motu notice of the scandal as it broke in November because its timely media coverage of the issue quickly made it the subject of widespread public outrage given the sensitivity of the matter. Such was the prestige of the PPP government that when a Saudi prince thought he should warn Pakistan of this corruption, he did not inform the Pakistan government but wrote a private letter to the Supreme Court. The indirect message was that he thought the government was implicated.

The central malpractice pertained to the housing provided to the pilgrims. They were charged more than what was due and given accommodation in structures not yet completely built or located too far from the Kaaba, making it impossible for them to walk to the mosque. There were allegations that someone took Rs25,000 per pilgrim from the tour operators who were given contracts. The Saudi prince alleged that the pilgrims were charged 3,500-3,600 Saudi Riyals for a place that should not cost more than 1,500 Riyals “under any circumstance”.

More outrage was caused when the government decided to give the defence of the case, now before the Supreme Court, to “the law firm of Latif Khosa at a fee of Rs5.5 million”, a lawyer not in great virtuous standing with the honourable court. Minister Kazmi, after having admitted to ‘some corruption’, further made a fool of himself when he told a parliamentary inquiry panel that he would not mind handing over the Hajj organisation responsibilities to the private sector, knowing fully well that most pilgrims would not be able to afford it. The post-scam strategy of the government has been equally smelly and damage-control has met with damage-enhancement.

Meanwhile, the government of Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani has been delivered almost a knock-out punch by what is called the ‘Multan Connection’. Minister Hamid Saeed Kazmi, Secretary Religious Affairs Agha Sarwar Raza Qizilbash, and ex-DG Haj Rao Shakil, are said to be the prime minister’s friends from Multan, with the last-named already under investigation by the FIA for his actions when he was District Coordination Officer Multan.

Once the Supreme Court is done with the case, more unsavoury details will surface. Already the PPP coalition is in the process of falling apart on a number of issues, foremost among them being the RGST enforcement. The opposition, PML-N, has ditched all its ‘democratic’ reservations and is gunning for a vulnerable government made shakier by WikiLeaks. The coalition partners are in open revolt in the case of the MQM that wants the people of Pakistan to launch a long march to topple it, while the JUI-F is in semi-revolt and the ANP is under pressure from the inside to join the rebellion. Could the Hajj of 2010 be the last nail in the coffin of a jinxed government?

Published in The Express Tribune, December 12^th, 2010.