That Darn Rat-PAC

NOVEMBER 2002 - I must confess that it is people like Mr.Waseem Sajjad who light up my days and sustain my belief that in the end we shall prevail. I am conscious that if we are to prevail in the end that has sinister implications and I also have no idea over whom or what shall we prevail, but then we are not privileged enough to know all the answers. Certainly, when we are begging on the street corners of the world, resplendent in our uniforms with so many medals that were we to fall down only a forklift would set us upright, we cannot be so fortunate as to have answers to things that beguile us. We live from day to day and therefore I find it perfectly understandable that people like Mr. Waseem Sajjad do set the standards for the rest of us to follow.

There is this rather troublesome and impudent Public Accounts Committee or PAC in case you are not into long names. It has no respect for the pillars on which we have built this great nation of 150 million souls – the bodies having long departed thanks to poverty, illiteracy and other equally fetching attributes. PAC has been gunning for many months now – gunning and other military terms being highly fashionable these days in the now very confused capital of Pakistan, the highly talented and committed Mr.Waseem Sajjad. He has been many things to us. A Rhodes scholar if I recall correctly, the Chairman of the Senate, the Acting President of the State and I am sure, a law minister as well – there have been so many one forgets. Now the Senate is being giving fresh oxygen supply under the ‘It’s the Real Thing – Democracy’ carnival that has led to the arrival of some of the strangest and most unlikely characters to descend on Islamabad. Mr. Sajjad is back and wants his share of the pie - again. He aspires for this Upper House where he has had such a wonderful time in the past, but somehow the PAC has stuck like a leech to his past. It continues to ask awkward and nasty questions that find their way into print. That has led Mr. Sajjad to beseech the President, Lord of all that he surveys, to grant him permanent immunity from the tentacles of the PAC and write off the piddly sum of about Rs. 5 million that Mr. Sajjad owes to the nation. And since the President hardly takes anything and only believes in giving, there is hope that he will accede to Mr. Sajjad’s plea. This wise move will pave the way for this illustrious son of the soil to once more grace the Senate that sits and ponders in the shadows of the Margalla Hills. This pardon or concession or munificence is very much in the style of how we govern Pakistan. After all, the same royal writ has seen it fit to write off sums of money owed to the people by such luminaries as Ch. Shujaat Hussain and Ch. Pervez Elahi. That pair is the very picture of integrity, decency and honesty. This great act has already cleared the way for them to indulge in Pakistan’s only sport not handled by Lt.Gen. Tauqir Zia, namely horse trading, though given Ch. Shujaat’s noble background, cattle trading would be preferable. The sums of money thus ‘written off’ are too obscene to be mentioned here since this is a family newspaper and we don’t want elderly citizens to suffer strokes, heart attacks and severe depression. The deed has been done and unlike Lady Macbeth, there is no need to wash hands either – we simply do not have so much water. Lady Macbeth had a troublesome conscience, a disease for which Islamabad has built-in immunity.

But what is the furor about the PAC findings? Simply that Mr. Sajjad is in default of payments for misuse of his official telephones and two Mercedes Benz limousines while he was the Chairman of the Senate in another time of ‘loot and corruption,’ a line that has now been added into the national anthem. There was this unjustified expenditure of Rs.1.085 million on additional phones. According to the PAC audit committee, the Chairman’s residence had four phones – obviously he was a phone-person, which were not his under the rules. However, the committee recommended that two phones were justified but asked the Chairman to clear dues for all four telephones. This of course he refused then and refuses now. Similarly, there was unauthorized use of Rs. 217,100 on a mobile phone and that too was to be recovered, but met with stout resistance from the Senate Secretariat led by its secretary, a Mr. Shahid Iqbal, whose mission in life is to ensure the Senate is not answerable to anyone, ever. A Pride of Performance award must be conferred on Mr. Iqbal without further delay. There was more irregular expenditure on the limos. Rs. 3.3 million on unauthorized purchase of a Merc – how we love them in Pakistan and non-recovery of Rs. 167,674 for unauthorized use of two additional cars. In all, a grand sum of Rs. 4.769 million. Now are we going to let a trifling sum like that stand in the way of an illustrious career that not only lies behind Mr. Sajjad but stretches ahead of him as well? When the President has had the grace to write off millions more for the Chaudhries, why show discrimination to the Rhodes scholar whose wisdom, advice, sagacity and integrity are the beacons for our future generations? Even Mr. Cowasjee will agree that this is peanuts especially since the season for them is upon us anyway.

There are just a few irritants in the way of a happy ending. Prominent politicians from Balochistan and Punjab have been jailed for several years and rendered disqualified for contesting any public office by NAB on similar charges. Former Speaker, Mr. Yousaf Raza Gillani, another illustrious son of the soil - this time the soil was Multan, was sentenced by NAB on similar grounds. How will the President settle this with his conscience? Well that shouldn’t cause him too many sleepless nights given that this is Pakistan where anything can be written off. I only fear that one of these days they might end up writing off Pakistan to some Chaudhry or the other with a cattle pedigree or other equally talented line of professional calling. The other bug is the PAC itself, which is defiant, led by a defiant Chairman and a defiant committee that seems to be committed to self-destruction. Certainly it has no respect for respected VIPs and treats them as common criminals, which we all know they are not. The Chaudhries are respected statesmen and astute financial wizards. There are others who are equally gifted and talented. The list is so long that it will look like a Prize Bond Draw. Perhaps that’s what it is anyway. If the President wants Mr. Sajjad to grace the Senate, he will be happy to write off the ‘unauthorised’ sum using his executive green pen, which you don’t question if you want to live in Pakistan. He would also be well advised to write off the PAC (and NAB too - though it should be renamed as NABCO – National Accountability Bureau for Civilians Only) and send the members of both outfits on a slow, leaky boat to China. And lastly, that troublesome hound, Mr. Rauf Klasra of The News, who Mr. Sajjad attacked for defaming him when reports first surfaced, should be taken by the ‘concerned agency’ to a lonely spot for a little friendly advice. Our apple cart may have only a few rotten apples left, but we are not going to let any one upset our cart, now that the hirsute circus is arriving in town.