Governing the capital — II

Islamabad is one of the few capitals in the developing world where there is no voice & no representation for citizens

Strangers have ruled Islamabad since its founding — the persons who had no local roots or representation, no long-term interest and no vision for its future. They were given postings in federal departments, the Capital Development Authority (CDA) or Islamabad Capital Territory; they exploited the opportunity their juicy placements offered, collected the booty and left for either foreign destinations, as dual citizens, or went to their hometowns to enjoy the rest of their lives. This opportunism and the corrupt practices to rob Islamabad were not confined to the bureaucrats. The political class, and particularly the party bosses in power and the establishment’s top brass, allocated key positions in the new, developing city to manage high value commercial and residential property.

How much of the property was arbitrarily allotted under various schemes, and also under schemes to benefit the top brass of the bureaucracy, judiciary, journalists, politicians and businessmen, needs to be probed and documented. All of the national wealth is within the family — the powerful elite club of every section of society that has value, relevance and a mutual dependency relationship with the political establishment of the country. The security establishment has its own parallel real estate development. Its top brass has also taken pieces of the Islamabad pie as favours, rewards, and when in power, as a matter of entitlement.

In recent decades, owing to the big wave of migration from other parts of the country to the capital, the real estate of Islamabad, including its countryside, has seen prices soar. It is the tranquillity of the city, the wonderful Margalla hills, and the fact that Islamabad is the national capital which has attracted families who can afford to buy a piece of property. This has also caused the greedy eye of the political establishment to make big money out of Islamabad. The political bosses have placed the ‘right’ individuals in key positions in the CDA, and have also often placed their frontmen as advisers to take as much as they could out of the city’s real estate. The big, unnecessary, often wasteful development projects in the city have provided yet another avenue for mega corruption.

The real estate story of Islamabad is a representative sample of how criminal syndicates have emerged in all big cities of Pakistan. The syndicates include political party bosses, real estate developers, and selectively, the bureaucrats that are given specific positions for specific jobs. The connection between the massive amounts of money made by the syndicates and the politics of Pakistan today has never been stronger. Their emerging power is fearsome, as they have the means, influence and gangs at their disposal to bribe, threaten and eliminate anyone who dares to stand in their way. Specific to Islamabad, every institution appears to have crumbled under the power of powerful interests.

How can one explain the changes, several times over, in the Islamabad Master Plan, building by-laws and regulations and grabbing of land that had already been acquired by the CDA for the development of sectors, except through the intervening power of influential groups? They have succeeded greatly in acquiring clout behind the scenes and also quite visibly by either diminishing the regulatary authority of governing institutions or by getting the ‘right’ persons in the right positions in the ICT and CDA administrations. The robbery of Islamabad’s resources has continued while governments have changed hands and the frontmen in the bureaucracy have changed places.

Islamabad is one of the few capitals in the developing world where there is no voice and no representation for citizens. So, the strangers and the powerful interests have built their power and continue their plunder.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 17^th,  2015.

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