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WEEKLY
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| Of cabinet apathy, who blocked Geo and watch your backs |
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Press Gallery
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
By Mohammad Malick
ISLAMABAD: The ministerial apathy is simply deplorable. What else do you say when the nation has been saddled with a cabinet of over 12 dozen flag flutterers, and when the house commenced its session do you know how many were present in the house? Just one! Is this a bad joke or what, and it even gets better when we talk about the performance of those asking questions of the government in the question hour.
The question hour is treated as sacrosanct in all established democracies because in this hour the government is brutally held accountable for its actions, or non-actions. And what has been happening now for the past many days here; the MNAs don’t even bother turning up in the house to pursue their question, giving credence to the perception that majority of them is just forwarding questions given to them by one vested interest or another, for whatever motives, and that our law-makers are nothing more than just ‘obliging processors of others agendas’.
This mockery of the system has to stop because if parliament cannot even get its opening act right, then what else can we expect of it. I was told after the session that one minister had even complained to the prime minister about the embarrassment caused by the cavalier attitude of the ministerial army and like on every other issue, the prime minister had expressed his deep annoyance with this trend.
But does anyone really care, because if they did then they would have treated the decisions taken in the November 5 meeting of the expanded cabinet with the prime minister seriously. I happened to read the classified minutes of that meeting and at one point the prime minister has been quoted as equating the government presence in the question hour as being the “litmus test” of governance.
Heck, he even pointed out to his unfailing habit of turning up in the house during the question hour (and today was no exception either).
But so much for the PM’s litmus test! And just in case you are wondering just where the mammoth cabinet had disappeared without a trace, well most of them are said to have been in Karachi to attend Khurshid Shah’s daughter’s wedding. So now at least we know the priorities of our ministers.
To be fair, however, after an hour or so a small number of ministers and sub-ministers did start strolling into the house but all said and done, it looked more like a forced session than one in which anyone seemed genuinely interested in making it fruitful. In fact, had anyone pointed out the quorum, maybe the session would have been called off for the day.
The little sparkly action came in the form of Ahsan Iqbal’s rising on a point of order and agitating the matter of suspension of Geo Network’s channels in Karachi and most parts of Sindh for the greater part of the day. Incidentally, it was also November 17 last year when Gen Musharraf had decided to pull the plug on Geo and other channels and trust Ahsan Iqbal to rub in the similarity. He also wanted the government to clarify the Washington Post story claiming that a tacit understanding had been reached between the US and the Pakistani government whereby they would continue ‘droning’ us while Islamabad would keep making loud protests, and that would be the end of it.
Clearly irritated at being put in the same light as Gen Musharraf, Sherry Rehman snapped back, saying that the PPP government believed in ending curbs not putting them. She insisted that the government had nothing to do with it but then wandered off on a rather weak argument by arguing that unless the channel pointed out someone it would be impossible for the government to investigate the matter. Maybe it would have been better if the minister had simply asked the PPP’s allied party in Sindh and would have surely emerged wiser and well-informed, but anyway it was all the opening that Ahsan Iqbal required who insisted that it was the government’s job to provide protection regardless of whether there was a nominated culprit by the affected or not.
Ahsan also slipped in a sizzler to Sherry’s argument about the Washington Post story being without any merit as it had quoted unidentified sources, when he simply asked whether the government then planned to sue the paper for maligning the country’s image by writing a false and damaging story. This probing question came right after the foreign minister, too, had spoken about the incorrectness of the story.
Wisely, neither Makhdoom Shah Mehmud nor Sherry took up this challenge. Maybe they know something that we don’t, something that made them stop a step short of actually suing the Washington Post.
No one in the house was worried about what was happening in the country’s largest province where things are really reaching what you may describe as the boiling point. The governor, Salman Taseer’s latest flurry of highly critical ‘official letters’ coming in the wake of the increasingly belligerent tone being adopted by the PML-N senior leadership, both inside and outside the National Assembly, have not gone unnoticed by those closely monitoring the political developments, or deteriorations, in Punjab.
The latest statement of Mian Nawaz Sharif all but calling categorically for the PPP to pull out of Punjab has put a lot of matters in top gear. According to one knowledgeable source, the Sharif brothers may have become convinced that in the near future both would be disqualified by the courts in the pending cases and could, therefore, be going in a pre-emptive defensive mode of creating the necessary distance from their once-upon-a-time political ally (the PPP) and making up their own moral public case for such an eventuality. In all seriousness, it would be a bit premature to conjure this political scenario in the coming weeks but then anything is possible, anytime in Pakistan.
Just a parting thought: the government would be well advised to watch its flanks because certain circles have been heard promoting the viewpoint that while the Khakis have submitted themselves totally to the political leadership’s prerogative of policymaking, especially in the troubled areas of Swat and the tribal region, but so far the ‘political leadership’ has been unable to take the commanding lead role. It always starts like this my friends, does it not?
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ISSN 1563-9479 
