The President can’t disown his signatures. The Federal Government, which tactfully secured the signatures, has officially publicized his unfair approval in the Gazette of Pakistan. Perhaps after reading a few lines, if awake, the President may formally withdraw his approval. That is the beauty of the Constitutions of Pakistan but if you are a son of Adam.
You are not but the President is obliged to read this report to the end. And as a son of Adam, he shall thank this magazine and kindly ignore the harsh advice tendered last week.
But let me first explain as to what went wrong. Interestingly, unlike Adam, the President may not know the violation he committed. Regret and repentance are intricately linked to awareness of a wrong. The President needs to examine his signatures on a law that he distorted in haste and distaste. The Law Secretary and the Law Minister he has hired call it “amendment”. Forgive them, for they have their own diction and addiction. The lucky Law Minister, reportedly, has already won a slot in the Federal Shariat Court. Shariat would be at his disposal. Every thing is fair and transparent under the sun. That appointment, too, was made by the same signature but this Article shall concern itself with a single signature.
Sometime in November last the President found the person he thought was fair and non-partisan. Yet to be double sure, he called the person to the Presidency and conducted, i.e.; subjected him to, an oath as the Prime Minister but without a public mandate. Obviously, the President took the entire burden on himself yet the wordings of the oath did reduce some burden. One commitment the person made was: “That, in all circumstances, I will do right to all manner of people, according to law, without fear or favour, affection or ill-will :” Now, to keep his commitment to adhere to law and still do the required right to a special category of people, he asked the Law Secretary to distort the law. All he required was a signature which luckily were not his own.
Obviously the President was busy. This February he had no time for the puppies he held dearly in October 1999. All his attention was instead focused on the dogs that were barking without interval because a few unless threatened could bite. The President is not too sure of English proverbs. Since the suicide attacks, he takes due precaution in all matters and movements except higher appointments.
By my computer, the lines above count just 420 words but the President cannot catch the 420 trick played by his trusted bureaucrats. If you can explain the fraud to the President in softer language, I can state the facts and defects. The good thing about the signature is that it was secured barely a couple of days after the President paid a heavy political cost for his past patronage. That cost was paid to make this territory a Republic where the right or wrong of legislation belongs to chosen representatives and in democracy only the chosen representatives shall favour the chosen bureaucrats.
The Principal Secretary to the
Prime Minister has displayed his foresight by making a timely reservation for himself. Courtesy the Caretaker Prime Minister and his blind subordinates, he managed to distort the law that regulates the Authority that in turn regulates the generation and pricing of electric power. Double sure about his displacement, the public servant eyed the slot where he could negotiate with investors. But the law made by the shortsighted public representative obstructed his placement, in letter if not in spirit. The law defined the head of the Authority in the following words: “Chairman shall be an eminent professional of known integrity and competence with at least 20-years of related experience in law, business, engineering, finance, accounting, economics or the electric utility business”. With the President’s signature, to the immediate if not exclusive benefit of the Principal Secretary we have now expanded the law by adding to the required qualification something it calls “public administration and management”. Mr. President, you better read those words as “mal-administration and mismanagement”. Allow me to ask you the meaning of the word “integrity”? I know that word is used in the Constitution but not in the same connotation. Integrity of Pakistan and Integrity of Pervez Musharraf are two different things. I am bothering you because the National Electric Power Regulatory Authority Act does not define “integrity”, “competence” or “eminence”. All we know is that the law emphasizes “known integrity” and with the signing of the Ordinance you have promulgated in honesty and ‘known integrity’ can cause serious doubts about your capacity even to read the Constitution. This nation has a reason to assume that the signature was in good faith but not in accordance with your commitment under the oath. An English Daily has misinformed the nation that the vacancy was formally advertised and no less that 72 persons of “known integrity” applied to shoulder the responsibility from both the private and public sector. I can’t believe this even if I see the public advertisement at the public expense. Of the 72 candidates, the 16 more appropriate for the post were short-listed and asked to appear before a committee headed by Cabinet Secretary that included Secretary Establishment beside Secretary Water & Power. All this exercise was at public expense and obviously in public interest. Resultantly the committee recommended a panel of five to allow the pick to the appointing authority. The appointing authority opted to be a disappointing authority when it declared the winner outside the contestants. English calls it merit.
Mr. President, it would be too harsh to ask you or the disappointing authority to refund the expenditure on the selection board before the same is included in my electricity bill. Can you kindly recall the easy and short process by which the Federal Government sought re-adjustments with the Independent Power Producers?
Knowing that we are a developing Republic, we shall not insist on the refund of the expenditure. Perhaps we can wait for another 350 to 400 years to catch-up with the Western democracies and we need not be measured by their yard-stick. Besides, the expenditure has not gone waste. The nation has found the most appropriate person for NEPRA that it just couldn’t find through advertisements. Only due to the warranted expenditure you are reading these lines and in between the lines.
Mr. President, if you had time I could explain that in the absence of the National Assembly, you just could not promulgate any ordinance regardless of the necessity. Let’s read Clause (1) of Article 89: (1) The President may, except when the National Assembly is in session, if satisfied that circumstances exist which render it necessary to take immediate action, make and promulgate an Ordinance as the circumstances may require.” Kindly see that the power can be exercised only when the Assembly is not in session but it is in existence. The members elect have still to take the oath and be called the National Assembly. The Federal Ordinance is a convenience of a Prime Minister who can convert it into an Act of Parliament within 4-months and you just can’t name the PM. Frankly, the persons you have hired as the Attorney General or Law Minister/Law Secretary are reading some other Code of Convenience they call the Constitution of Pakistan. Your continued reliance on them can land you in hell of convenience in the months ahead. Thank God, you are too busy and can’t spare the time for the silly meanings I derive from the same Article by which you promulgated (read: enforced) the non-controversial selection of a talented public servant. Remember, any one accepting a lower slot is always a crook. Men of integrity shun such opportunity. Can you kindly recall a Chief Justice of Pakistan who happily accepted relegation to Election Commission? You have a good memory. I didn’t ask you to recall the Ordinance you kindly signed to increase his salary purely as a collective favour to the people of Pakistan.
Many journalists in this Republic can easily peal this Ordinance to multiply your embarrassment but I shall help you repeal the same. The Constitution empowers you to withdraw an Ordinance “at any time”. The Constitution treats the believers and non-believers in Adam at par. It afford an opportunity to anyone who is willing to redress a wrong. Yet it insists that the President of Pakistan shall be a son of Adam.
Quick Dismissals
Shahid Orakzai
Last week the Pulse forgot to give a timely advice to President George Bush of United States. Domestic scene may be absorbing but a magazine like Pulse shall not ignore its international responsibilities. However, we are still in time to sound what we see as the most logical consequence of the transparent elections in Pakistan. And for the sincere advice to George Bush, one can’t find better words than the Editor: “The verdict of the people of Pakistan is loud and clear: Mr. President, show some grace and go home”.
The duplicated suggestion is a lot more attractive than the original. Let’s wait for the response from President Bush because ‘grace’ won’t cost him as much as it can cost President Musharraf this hour. Bush is almost at the end of his second four-year term in Grey House. Musharraf, on the contrary, has still four years and three quarters to go. Yet somehow the (well earned) taunts at Musharraf stick well on Bush.
“President Musharraf had neither risen to the level of a statesman who could win the hearts and minds of the people, nor did he associate himself with an overwhelming majority of 160 million.”
Frankly, President Bush has been ignoring the occurrences in Iraq and Afghanistan and the elections or selections in those two territories, some still call states, can’t be interpreted against him like the transparent elections in Pakistan. In all non-seriousness at my command, I can demand that President Bush “will show grace if he seizes the opportunity and steps down, telling the nation he has kept his promise to ensure free, fair and transparent elections (in Pakistan)”. Can you name another President outside Pakistan who had a bigger hand or bigger stakes in these elections?
Knowing that Pakistan is fighting the war on terror in her own cause, one may remind the readers that the war was not declared by the President we wish to retire as a consequence of the election that some have branded as a referendum against him. I do have a right to differ with the Editor but in Pakistan, I can exercise that right only once. That is why I have wisely chosen to duplicate the suggestion and address it to a President who can oblige. Yet I have a problem.
The leading critics of President Bush in the National Assembly and the Frontier Assembly are out in the same election. They were routed in their traditional strong holds. Cursing Bush didn’t bring them any luck. All that they pretended or preached is void. For them today is worse than yesterday. For they have no bird in hand and no bird in bush. And Bush can, justifiably, claim it as victory. Besides the new members are more than eager to side with Bush but if he can kindly endorse their interpretation of the results.
If you are reading these lines as an anti-thesis of what the Editor suggested last week, you are reading at your own risk. I am as independent a writer as the Q-League was as a political party. A good journalist, like the Editor, shall recall commitment of a leader preferably in his own words. “I will quit if my supporters loose” were the words the President may not instantly honour. Intelligently, President Bush has not made any such commitment. Instead he has been asking his supporters and allies “to do more”. That is a much better approach than endorsing a performance that is rejected by the ballot.
Now if the President can’t display the grace as suggested last week, he may kindly take note that the grace period of almost three months is gone and onwards he has to strictly follow the Constitution. He can’t find the kind of subordinates he is much accustomed to. The new stock is rather insubordinate and he will have to reason than command his juniors. That may involve some serious reading of the Constitution and he may find time as well. His opponents are determined to make him a Rafiq Tarar but he has no intentions to grow a beard.
Any journalist would be perfectly within his right to question the election of Pervez Musharraf as the President if he did raise a finger at a fault in the election. Allow me to recall that there was only a single objector to point out to the Supreme Court, headed by Chief Justice of Pakistan, Mr. Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry, that the electoral college was not competent to elect any one as the President because it was about to end its constitutional term. But the Supreme Court, some wish to restore, asked a damn clerk to put a silly objection on the Constitution Petition. When the objection was questioned before a judge in the Chamber, there was no judge in the Chamber. Many months later when the Chief Justice of Pakistan was difficult to be found, Punjab decided to hold its own referendum wherein there was no question that could be answered by a yes or no. Not a single political party did have the trust in the Supreme Court to give a ruling on the competence of the electoral-college. They staged their own theatres. Kindly recall that independent judiciary had been restored on August 20 and the Supreme Court’s order to enforce the Fundamental Right of two rich and influential citizens was later thrown in the dust bin by the Airport manager. Let us refresh our memories before we restore the Supreme Court another time. A retired judge of the Supreme Court was a Presidential Candidate and neither he nor his lawyers saw any wrong with the electoral-college. All incompetent voters were counted by an incompetent Chief Election Commissioner and result withheld. The Chairman Senate and Speaker National Assembly were also in the race under invisible, rather visible, prompts. The Chief Justice of Pakistan had the grace to ignore all fouls.
Let’s suppose, the King’s Party had scored a landslide victory, would the electoral triumph justify all that was done in September and October last year? The wrong in November could not rectify the wrong in September.
