By Mir Mohammad Ali Talpur
Whenever and wherever civilian governments have been ousted by the military, the core argument forwarded as justification for this blatantly illegal and unjustified act is that 'civilian governments' are inherently corrupt, inefficient, extravagant, domineering, unproductive and clique-ridden. In short they have no redeeming features.
This naturally means that those replacing the stinking lot must be of the most fragrant variety untarnished by corruption, cliques, charlatanism and all other evils of the ousted lot. To decide how the situation stands in reality and whether these self-proclaimed angels live up to their billing, we have to look at the record of the 'driven snow' that replaces corrupt 'civvies'.
The generals too, like politicians, appoint their favourites. These appointments, touted as a prerequisite for increasing efficiency and curbing corruption, have more often than not exacerbated the crisis of ineptitude, willful waste and corruption and, in the process, eroded governance. The scale of appointments has been massive in recent years.
According to a report: "In 2003, as many as 104 serving and retired lieutenant generals, major generals or equivalent ranks from other services are among the 1,027 military officers inducted on civilian posts in different ministries, divisions and Pakistani missions abroad after the Oct 12, 1999 military takeover.
"Of these 1,027 military officers inducted on civilian posts, 27 military officers have been given the prized grade 22 while 62 officers have been adjusted in Grade 21. A whopping figure of 150 officers occupies civilian positions in Grade 20. There are 276 officers between Grade 20 and 22 alone. In the Foreign Office, 13 lieutenants and major generals were appointed as ambassadors to different countries, while one brigadier and a major also got ambassadorial positions."
Not content with the above, the military bureaucracy in February 2004 sought permission from the defence ministry to directly appoint army officers in the Military Lands and Cantonments (MLC) against vacant posts bypassing the Federal Public Service Commission (FPSC) recruitment rules.
Now let us take a few shining examples of the supposed efficiency and improvements. According to the Audit Report 2000-01, the Pakistan Post had suffered a loss of Rs14,309.9m under its former director-general, a retired brigadier. The report says that despite this enormous dent, the brigadier is reported to have refused audits whenever teams of the auditor-general approached his department. He had, of his own accord, declared the Post Office an autonomous body and refused to obey any government rules and principles. The retired brigadier's appointment itself had been against rules and regulations. It is beyond me to give a name to such conduct.
Perhaps one of the worst disasters, other than the frequent Ghotki-like incidents, that struck the Pakistan Railways (PR) was when it was decided by the present executive to burden its already crumbling system with three generals — that definitively and irreparably broke the system's back.
Not long ago, a report stated that the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) was informed that the national exchequer suffered a loss of Rs30m per month due to the faulty locomotives imported during the tenure of a lieutenant general. Three generals, one of whom was the federal minister for railways, the other its chairman and the third the general manager, administration, ignored all accepted procedures and bought 69 locomotives from China for $98m in 2002. Not surprisingly a subcommittee of PAC headed by a ruling party MNA, a retired colonel, exonerated them. The report said, "The PAC here on Friday cleared the three retired generals including Federal Education Minister Javed Ashraf Qazi in the $98m Chinese locomotives scam, saying the officials had struck the deal in good faith."
It is worth mentioning that the general had received the approval of the entire scheme on Dec 29, 1999 at the meeting of the NSC presided over by President Gen Pervez Musharraf. Apportioning criminal liability would have affected top guns too so they were conveniently cleared.
There has been misuse of position wherever an opportunity has presented itself. Giving one such example, Ayesha Siddiqa wrote, "The transfer of one portion of Karachi's National Stadium to Karachi Cantonment Board is a prime example of military land-grabbing." A recent chairman of Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB), also a lieutenant general, was responsible for transferring the said land during his tenure in the cricket board. "A minimum of Rs600,000 netted a profit of about Rs15m in a quick 60 to 90 days. Such manipulative capacity is only available to the most influential institutions or individuals in the country." He has of late joined the PPP.
It is interesting to note that Lt Gen Muneer Hafeez, the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) chairman, had categorically said that the department neither had the capability nor the mandate to investigate corruption in the armed forces. He should have added that this included retired officers too. The exception being former Admiral Mansur-ul-Haq who must have done something particularly nasty to invite such wrath; former and not retired because Pervez Musharraf stripped him of his rank and military awards for receiving kickbacks in multi-billion dollar defence deals. He paid $7.5m (Rs457.5m) under a bargain plea of which 20 per cent went to an American law firm, Broadsheet, for its services. A person who can pay $7.5m in fines must certainly have a lot more in his kitty.
There is a long list of misdoings starting with 80 jaunts in eight years, crushing an independent judiciary, violation and mutilation of the Constitution, rising inflation, food shortages, indefinite power cuts, suicide bombings, military operations in Balochistan, Pemra Ordinances, May 12 incidents, a deteriorating situation in NWFP, bogus referendums, breakdown of law and order, farm-houses in Islamabad, re-election by expired assemblies, creation of a King's party, and the Kargil disaster.
Additionally the gun and drug culture, a creation of ethnic outfits, local Taliban, Hudood and Blasphemy Ordinances, the Dhaka debacle, Indus Basin Treaty and many others are all gifts of military rulers. It may be pertinent to add that stints of so-called democratic rulers have also contributed towards creating a situation where a 'doomsday' scenario seems imminent.
The new COAS Gen Ashfaq Kayani seems to be systematically reversing earlier policies. Kayani has achieved this by issuing two key directives: prohibiting soldiers from meeting with politicians and ordering all active officers who hold posts in civilian agencies to resign from their positions. This is a healthy development but it should be understood that there can be no easy and quick 'disengagement' from what has become lifeblood for the institution's higher echelons. The current year has also been declared 'The Year of the Soldier' by him — perhaps because our past years were 'Years of the Generals'.
The writer has been associated with the Baloch national struggle.
mmatalpur@gmail.com |
