Another debacle
The PTI
government in its relatively short time in office has betrayed an incredible
talent for shooting itself in the foot. In the latest of such gaffes, the
federal government on October 9, 2018 removed the Punjab Inspector General (IG)
of police barely four weeks after he was posted. Two consequences flowed from
this decision. One, the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) suspended the
notification removing IG Mohammad Tahir as violating its ban on transfers and
postings of officials till the by-polls on October 14. It also sought an
explanation from the Establishment Division Secretary within two days why its
instructions in this regard had not been complied with. Two, the police reforms
commissioner imported from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) for his much acclaimed
changes in the province’s police functioning, Nasir Durrani, reportedly
resigned. It is inexplicable how the Establishment Division Secretary, an
experienced officer, was either oblivious to the ECP’s directives or, which may
be even more sinister, failed to inform the government of the fallout of its decision.
The PTI has often boasted of the reforms its government in KP from 2013 till
this year’s election carried out in the province to depoliticise the police and
ensure its autonomy from political interference. This claimed flagship
achievement was made possible by the helmsmanship of Nasir Durrani. Now if he
has resigned on the issue of the removal of the Punjab IG, it raises a host of
questions about the claims regarding KP as well as leaving the government with
egg on its face for doing precisely what Nasir Durrani was inducted in Punjab
to prevent. And what was the PTI government’s beef with IG Mohammad Tahir? According
to federal Information Minister Fawad Chaudhry, the IG was replaced because he
was not following the government’s orders. Reportedly, he had been resisting
requests by PTI bigwigs to have sundry District Police Officers (DPOs) etc
transferred and replaced by their own blue-eyed boys. He had also reportedly resisted
pressure from the PTI government to remove those police officers from their
posts who were investigated and cleared by the Joint Investigation Team (JIT)
in the Model Town killings case. Prima facie, the IG was doing the right thing.
If this is going to earn the ire of the PTI government, is there any hope of
the necessary Punjab police reforms, let alone the better functioning of other
segments of the bureaucracy? Prime Minister Imran Khan on the same day had
exhorted civil servants to improve their performance, being the backbone of the
state, as the government’s policy of depoliticisation of institutions,
meritocracy and transparency offered them a great opportunity to do this.
Whither such appeals in the face of crass self-interest interfering with this
policy in the case of the IG Punjab?
It has
unfortunately become an entrenched custom that governments pick and choose
officials to serve their partisan political interests, whether at the federal,
provincial or district levels. The disease is so widespread and of such long
standing that it hardly raises an eyebrow by now. It has come to be
subliminally internalised by the state and society as the ‘right’ of the
incumbent government to have officials of its choice in prize positions. This
is precisely what the PTI boasted it had overcome in KP in the case of the
province’s police under Nasir Durrani, and what it intended to do in the rest
of the country. If so, the PTI government has fallen flat on its face at the
first hurdle. Unfortunately, this is not the first time this has happened in
the first 50 days of this government. When the PTI was in the opposition, it
castigated the PPP Sindh government for its repeated attempts to remove Sindh
IG A D Khawaja. It was only when the Sindh High Court intervened that these
efforts subsided. Now it seems the PTI has not heard of the old adage: what is sauce
for the goose is also sauce for the gander. The case of Punjab IG Mohammad
Tahir has shown that far from a principled position on depoliticisation and
autonomy for the police, the PTI government is inclined to embrace this
principle when convenient, and abandon it when it is not. Good governance?
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