I say 'also' because similar tactics were used by the Punjab government of Pervaiz Elahi when it went ahead with the construction of an IMAX theatre on what was a public amenity, the Doongi Ground, where generations of young boys (and girls) played cricket and of whom many reached First Class standard and at least four made it to our Test team.
Once more a recap of the Lahore scandal. I know because I have been associated with the many committees formed by the present Punjab government to try and sort out the mess left by the previous one in the shape of the Doongi Ground.
When the Supreme Court bench under My Lord Ramday asked to see the plans to ascertain whether the ground was indeed an amenity (which the government was contesting), lawyers, representing the government, including some big names, were made to lie in front of the honourable Supreme Court no less, that all the master plans of the Gulberg scheme had been lost to a flood in the year dot. It was a white lie because the plans turned up in a jiffy as soon as my committee asked for them three years later.
This is an old tactic in this country where people in authority, particularly government departments, lie at the drop of a hat to save their superiors, in the Doongi Ground case almost all of the senior Punjab bureaucracy. Why, eight serving secretaries to the government sat on the board of directors of a wholly government-owned entity called the Punjab Entertainment Company (PEC) which was to run the IMAX theatre among other silly ventures. Talk of corruption in high places. Incidentally, the present Punjab government commissioned an inquiry into the affairs of the PEC which committee came out with a damning report which is yet to see the light of day.
Does one have to say that it is high time government officials too are proceeded against according to the law and made an example of according to the law? (And indeed, members of the judiciary and the armed forces too?) It is no good at all to just hold politicians accountable as has always been the case in the Land of the Pure. It is unfair; it is one-sided.
We must immediately note that a sum of Rs1,000m was arbitrarily transferred to the PEC by the then Punjab government of which approximately Rs500m had already been flushed down the drain by the time the present government stopped the haemorrhage by disbanding the PEC.
Additionally, one must look at the cavalier way in which the IMAX theatre was ordered by Pervaiz Elahi in typical Sikha Shahi (which had nothing to do with Maharaja Ranjit Singh please, who was a great and just and wise ruler) fashion as if the Chaudhries actually owned Punjab. An IMAX theatre, the equipment of which needs a temperature of 26C and near-zero humidity just to survive, in Lahore which is hellish hot for eight months of the year and has a humidity in the high 90s for six? Add to that the electricity shortage which was also the case at the time the equipment was ordered by paying for it upfront.
The long and the short of it is that the government today is staggering under the weight of the appalling decisions of its predecessor. What is it to do with the by now outdated IMAX equipment which is already paid for and sits in its production factory in Canada? Accept a settlement payment which is approximately one-fifth the total paid, or import it into the country, pay duty on it and then let it rust in some warehouse because it makes simply no sense to spend another 200 million on something that will never run and which will instead take something like 15 million a year to just maintain?
But going back to Islamabad, it is instructive to see Gen Musharraf's favourite theatre producer — who had been stopped from turning Islamabad's Doongi Ground, the F-7 Park, into a commercial venture, food outlets, mini-golf course et al by the Supreme Court — petition the very same man he used to deride (once on TV after the chief justice was dismissed by Gen Musharraf).
How well I remember this man, Shah Sharabeel if I have his name right, drive up in his SUV, park it across the road from where eight or 10 or 20 of us would be protesting the superior judiciary's sacking and imprisonment and jeer at us with taunts and sarcastic smiles. How fortunes change. In passing, might I point out to their lordships that their orders to cancel the F-7 commercial project and make a park instead have been ignored until today? Mayhap they will give some attention to this too after they are done putting sitting ministers on the mat.
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