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WEEKLY
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| Ask parliament to clean up the mess |
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Tuesday, November 24, 2009
This is in reference to the news analysis "How to clean up the bloody mess-2" by Shaheen Sehbai (November 23). All of a sudden we have made the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) an honourable institution and many of us would like to see it as a powerful body once again, forgetting the news stories which we ran a few years ago about it involving illegal detention, political victimisation and controversial cases. Now some of us are once again expressing the desire that the army should clean up the mess.
Let me say that the National Reconciliation Ordinance (NRO) is a bad law and I am not ready to buy the PPP version that it was the only way Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif could return to Pakistan. As far as criminal cases are concerned I can say with my 30 years of experience in journalism that in the 80s and 90s thousands of political workers were booked, tried, convicted, hanged and flogged for political reasons. Many lost their lives in extrajudicial killings in Karachi but the officers responsible for those killings are still occupying senior positions in government.
If we look at the NRO against this backdrop, hardly one per cent of the accused politicians and bureaucrats were actually found corrupt. I don't see any institution in Pakistan which can clean up this mess and fingers can also be pointed to the field I belong to i.e. the media. I still have faith in democracy and still desire that it should be given a chance to grow. In democracy at least people can hold their leaders accountable. People can reject or accept their representatives and therefore it is the people who clean up the mess in due course of time. Asking generals, who actually created the mess, to clean it up is of no use.
In the last one year due to the efforts of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC), around Rs20 billion were recovered. Audit reports of some institutions revealed irregularities worth billions of rupees, and we should keep in mind that politicians were not involved directly, although some of them might have received their 'commissions'. I expected that a respected journalist like Shaheen Sehbai would ask parliament, not the army chief, to clean up the mess. Let the army chief tackle security issues and address the threat of terrorism. Also, one should remember that Gen Kayani was part of General Musharraf's team and headed the ISI which must have played an important role in finalising the NRO deal.
I admire the way Nawaz Sharif has handled the situation and set some good examples like asking Saeed Mehdi, whose name is on the NRO list, to resign from his Punjab government post. Mr Sharif's earlier actions within the party and blocking of undemocratic moves are a good omen for democracy.
Mazhar Abbas
Islamabad
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ISSN 1563-9479 
