M Ziauddin
Both the PML-N and the PPP have supported
the bills pertaining to the appointment and ex
tension of the three Services’ chiefs and the Chairman joint chiefs of staff (CJCS), limiting, however, the service of a general to 64 years of age and at the same time according the Chief Executive (Prime Minister) the prerogative to advise the President on these matters. Clearly, none of these bills is person specific to General Qamar Javed Bajwa. It makes it Gen. Bajwa specific only indirectly, though, but that too if one were to read the bill regarding the appointment and extension/reappointment of Chief of Armed Services (COAS) along with the mention that it is solely the prerogative of the PM to appoint a COAS and grant him extension in the service which PM Khan has already done in the case of Gen. Bajwa who after having retired in November 2019 is currently on a Supreme Court granted six-month extension in his service by the expiry of which, if a law covering the matter is not passed by parliament he would finally stand retired.
The seeming after-thought of the PML-N to have the bills go through the entire gamut of the normal legislative process has got nothing to do with the thrust and content of the bills. In fact, the after-thought only endorses the condition the PPP Chairman Bilawal Bhutto had posed for supporting the bill. The government had already accepted Bilawal’s condition and sent the bills to the Defence Committee of the National Assembly where these were passed unanimously on Friday. As per the original plan of the government the bills were to be rushed though the National Assembly and the Senate the very next day (Saturday). But now that the two Houses have been summoned today (Monday), instead of calling them on Saturday could perhaps mean that the desire of the PML-N chief, Nawaz Sharif which he is supposed to have expressed in a letter to Khawaja Asif would be accommodated by the government. Most probably, in view of the bills having already been passed by the NA Defence Committee, the government would not find it too risky or/and too time consuming to let the bills go through the normal legislative process, instead of rushing them through the two houses in a matter of hours. Now the bills would be sent to Senate Defence Committee after getting them through the National Assembly on Monday and have the Senate pass them by Tuesday after having them processed by the Defence Committee of the Upper House.
Anyway, the negotiating team led by Defence Minister Pervez Khattak would perhaps go back to the PML-N and PPP (if they have not done that yet) to renegotiate the time-table for completing the legislative process for the bills in question. The currently London-based PML-N leadership on its part, contrary to what most of the media and the PML-N’s social media activists are assuming, has not, one is certain, traded its ‘Vote ko Izzat do’ slogan for the relief it is now enjoying by way of the bail granted to Nawaz Sharif on medical grounds. In fact, even that part of the bills which accords the prerogative to the PM for appointing and granting extension to a COAS does not appear to be person-specific because, it will remain the prerogative of the PM to name a new COAS when it is time for Gen. Bajwa to finally retire and even when someone else other than Imran Khan is the PM.
And to reiterate, by supporting the bills in question in parliament the PML-N has not taken a U-turn on its position against according an extension in service to the present incumbent COAS. And the PPP on its part cannot take a higher moral position relative to the PTI on this aspect because when in power the Party Co-chairman, Asif Ali Zardari occupying the Office of the President had given the former COAS, General (Red.) Kiayani an extension of three-years in his service. After the passage of the bills regarding the appointment and extension of the four chiefs in uniform, the government is likely to table a NAB bill—hopefully after redrafting it to bring it closer to the one acceptable to the Opposition. While the PPP wants it to be scrapped completely (which the PTI government is not likely to accept), the PML-N would like to see the remand period for the arrested on charges of corruption curtailed from 90 days to 14 and; it would also like NAB courts to be empowered to grant bail.
The PTI, especially Prime Minister Imran Khan, has on more than one occasion stated that the NAB should have the powers to apprehend all those who steal public money for private philandering. Considering the fact that both the civil servants as well as the private businessmen have stopped what they are supposed to be doing in normal circumstances because of the fear of the NAB which over the last more than two years has become very real, thus disrupting governance and business activities in the country, the PM would like to see the civil bureaucracy and the private businessmen kept out of the purview of the NAB.
Here, it would not be out of place to mention that being the principle accounting officer, it is the civil bureaucrat who signs all the official documents while processing projects planned by the elected government. But neither the NAB nor our other intelligence agencies have the qualified manpower to investigate white collar crimes except to fall back on ‘asset beyond means’ charges. But the banking rules in the country as well as the rules guiding the real estate business have rendered almost impossible to gather irrefutable evidence to prove ’assets beyond means’ cases.
And also, since the civil servant has been removed from the ambit of the NAB, what would stop him/her from using his signature to benefit a private contractor or a sitting public office holder? And on the other hand what would stop an incumbent government from using the NAB to implicate political opponents in corruption cases, as is happening currently. In politics it is the perception that counts rather than the truth. The drill that one has observed since NAB was constituted by military dictator Gen. (Retd) Musharraf runs something like this: NAB nabs a political opponent of the regime before gathering any evidence of wrong doing on the part of the victim and even before asking for remand of the victim from the courts leaking the story to the selected media persons who more often than not start what is called a media trial of the victim destroying the good name for good of even innocent politicians. Indeed, by the time the case reaches the trial stage, the leaked stories have already achieved the objective of destroying the reputation of the victim.
Meanwhile, the verdict of the special court against Gen.(Retd) Pervez Musharraf is considered the biggest political victory of the PML-N leadership which despite all kinds of warnings against and even suffering the loss of the government managed seemingly by behind-the-scene forces, being subjected to the worst NAB treatment of its kind and treated by the government led by the Prime Minister Imran Khan himself as common criminals not even fit to shake hands, Nawaz Sharif and his daughter Maryum Nawaz had continued to pursue. The PML-N believes this verdict would re-enforce and uphold the principle of ‘Vote ko izzat do’ while making it clear to all the would-be coup makers not to demean the sanctity of the vote by taking over the reins of the country exploiting to the hilt the fire-power of the country’s one of the most disciplined instruments of governance.
— The writer is veteran journalist and a former editor based in Islamabad.
