10 words that rocked parliament house - I

The Frontier Post
M Sarwar Awan
“You brought disgrace to the entire house of National Assembly.” This was the 10-word sentence Justice Khilji Arif expressed while addressing Jamshed Dasti, an elected MNA and also holding the post of Chairman National Assembly’s Standing Committee on Sports, during hearing of a case of fake degree that should have shaken the building of the Parliament as this disgrace was brought by none other than the members of the always held ‘supreme’ National Assembly themselves. It was a time of shame for the whole lot of the entire House when the court after failure of the ‘honourable’ MNA to answer a few common questions usually taught to the beginners at the school or madrassah and that too relating to his Master Degree subject asked him to resign or be ready to go to jail. But here we forget one thing that the word ‘shame’ is no more found in the dictionary of the present so-called leaders sans some of the highly educated and disciplined parliamentarians. It was a thing of the past lost in the wilderness of greed years ago. If this young man have an iota of shame he would not have indulged in this cheat and fraud. It would be better if all the members of parliament who presented fake degrees and some how managed to win elections and play with the destiny of this poor and unfortunate nation should resign giving any respectable reason. The irony of the fate is that Dasti managed to get fake degree equivalent to MA and that too in Islamiyat from a religious madrassah. Further another MNA Nazeer Jatt and an MPA from Punjab, judging the fate of their cases, thought it better to resign instead of appearing in the apex court and facing the volley of questions by the highly respectable and senior members of the Supreme Court. The universities in foreign countries are already not accepting the degrees awarded by our universities. This event has very badly tarnished the image of the degrees possessed by our youth. Now first of all let us see the reason why a decay and an ad hoc situation is prevailing in our society. Every department is facing deterioration. The common people vote to elect their representatives to the National and provincial assemblies entrusting them the responsibility to make laws for the betterment of the country’s citizens and also using their vision and farsightedness to frame policies keeping in mind the present day modern developments and technology to enable them to compete with the people of the developed world. But unfortunately our elected assembly members always lacked vision and forsightedess which is amply reflected by the speeches delivered by them during debates in the assembly whether it be a debate on national budget, war on terror or any external or internal problem faced by the country. Except a few members, all the elected representatives have never forwarded a new proposal or given new suggestion to improve the status of the oppressed people of this country. The parliamentarians taking part in assembly debates spend their energies blaming the past governments saying that they ignored all the departments and nation was facing problems for the misdeeds and follies committed by the past rulers but they all forget that former rulers were not aliens but their kith and kin, their fathers and grandfathers. Another famous and effective excuse forwarded by the assembly members is that bureaucracy was creating hurdles in their way to work for the masses’ welfare but the fact is that elected members due to lack of knowledge and abilities fail to counter the bureaucracy. So in order to safe face these people make bureaucrats a scapegoat to hide their failures. In short they have thousands of excuses to prove their innocence and put the blame on the shoulders of others. The members of this unfortunate and hapless nation have been witnessing this blame game for the last 40 years. The elected members complete their tenure playing this blame game and trying to push the opposition to the corner. During the period, especially the democratic governments, such policies had been adopted which played havoc with industries and now we are witnessing not thousands but lakhs of unemployed people, we daily read news of suicides by the jobless people. Country men have been witnessing the development plans devised by the democratic governments starting from Junejo era up to the present democrats. No government has planned any long-term development plans but only such programmes have been devised which benefited a small number of people for a short time just draining the national exchequre. For example, the Junejo government introduced three and five marla schemes in the name of poor and homeless people. Further a so-called plan to promote education and especially to make older people literate Taleem-i-Balghaan was announced and so millions of rupees were wasted. Now come to the present government. The present democrats from the day one are distributing taxpayers’ money in the name of Benazir Bhutto. These useless plans are short-lived. Some people term this exercise as election bribery. These programmes portray the short-sightedness of the leaders. One can safely say that more than five centuries ago Sher Shah Suri who ruled India for a few years was more intelligent and had vision who used the national exchequre with great care. Historians say that people were finding it hard to get jobs. Some of his advisors told him to distribute the money lying in government kity but he refused to do so. Sher Shah ordered construction of Grand Trunk Road starting from Peshawar to Calcutta. In this way a grand road was constructed, joblessness ended to an extent, and untill now hundreds of cities have been set up along side the Road. Crores of people even now are benefiting from this one project of Sher Shah. One can say that money was well spent. Year after year has elapsed but we are still reading ministers’ statements prepared by PROs. These statements have no difference, one issued 30 or 40 years ago or issued now, are the same. These all facts indicate and prove inability, inefficiency and ignorance of the MPs about the present day developments taking place in the world and it is certainly due to illiterate lot of our parliamentarians as compared to the developed world. Now it is the time for the experts and technocats to frame policies, face the present day challenges and bring the country at par with the other countries in all fields and mere a degree whether it is of MA or BA would not be working. Now let’s come back to the MNAs and MPA who resigned from the assembly seats. Actually these assembly members have played fraud and cheated the nation of millions of rupees. The honourable judges of the Supreme Court have ordered new elections on the seats vacated by these MPs. These elections will certainly cost a lot of money collected through the taxes from the common people. The court only ordered these cheaters to resign and imposed no penalty on them. It would have been a nice step on part of the Supreme Court if these culprits had been made to pay back all the money they received as salary, allowances, all fringe benefits, TA/DA and tours abroad on the expanse of State exchequre. Further the money to be spent on the re-elections should also be received from these people because re-elections are being held due to their fraud and cheating. Here a question arises as to what is the criteria which the party committees or the party heads follow while awarding party ticket to a candidate to contest elections. Usually party heads allot election ticket to a member of the party known to him for years then how is it possible that he is not aware of the expected candidate’s educational qualifications. It will be better for the nation and country’s future that party heads awarding election tickets should be held responsible if they award tickets to candidates having fake degrees. It means that party head would be assisting a cheater to commit a fraud so he would be equally responsible for this fraud.