Daily Times

The president of Pakistan should, in my humble opinion, immediately appoint a really high-powered judicial commission to investigate what happened to all the commissions, panels and committees that have over the years investigated all sorts of things and what happened to their reports before new commissions are appointed to investigate new things. As it is, it seems that four different panels/commissions are already looking into the Abbottabad affair and the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) wants yet another one.

A commission was formed just the other day to inquire into the attack on the US Embassy motorcade in Peshawar as was one formed to find the ‘truth’ about the shooting of five Chechens near Quetta. A couple of months ago when the young doctors went on strike in Punjab, at least three and possibly four commissions were formed to investigate the causes of the strikes and apportion blame for the unfortunate deaths of patients during the strikes. If memory serves, all these commissions were instructed to present their findings within two weeks and that was two months ago.

Personally I have nothing against commissions and panels of inquiry. However, I must admit that whenever I get stuck in another traffic jam brought about by VVVIP movement, or some group of unhappy government servants, or a group of passionate patriots blocking different city streets demanding the formation of another commission of inquiry, I do get a chance to discuss politics with my driver. Frankly, his opinions and thoughts about what is wrong with this country and how it can all be fixed are often better thought out by far than much of the blather one hears on TV or reads in newspapers. If I had my druthers I would appoint him to head all such commissions for surely he would easily be able to figure out the right thing to do in very short order.

This brings me to something I learned very early in my professional career. If you want to make sure that nothing is ever really done about something, then the best thing to do is form a committee or a commission of inquiry to determine the ‘facts’ and decide about what needed to be done. Of course there are some things that do need to be investigated and most organisations have internal mechanisms that handle such matters.

The problem in Pakistan is that nobody trusts anybody else. The entire country is so steeped in corruption at almost all levels that it is unlikely to get any meaningful action from almost any official body. Worse, most people who do really ‘bad things’ are so well connected that it is virtually impossible to investigate or prosecute them effectively. Notable exceptions are politicians out of favour with whoever is in power at any given time.

In my opinion, even if we create a new commission to investigate what happened in Abbottabad, it is unlikely that anybody of any significance in the existing power hierarchy will ever be found guilty of any wrongdoing. Of course the only person who can and should be blamed for everything and anything wrong with Pakistan is the former president and chief of the army staff sitting in exile in London. He is so thoroughly out of power and has no chance of even recovering any bit of it ever again that he can be safely blamed for whatever anybody wants to blame him for. But wait, is he not being blamed for everything wrong already?!

However, investigative commissions do have a certain use, especially in ‘real’ democracies. Open investigations can provide an opportunity for national catharsis. For instance, the ‘in-camera’ session of parliament where senior members of the armed forces turned up to answer questions and present their point of view could have served such a purpose. In the US such a session would have been open with complete TV coverage. It would have been first repeated in one House of Congress and then the other. All the ‘generals’ would have been marched in one after the other, forced to take an oath and then questioned on the ‘record’. If any answers are found to be wrong, they become liable to be tried in a court of law for perjury.

Sadly, no such thing can ever happen in modern Pakistan. The last time a real commission sat down and questioned a lot of powerful and important people and then published a detailed report about its findings was a little less than 60 years ago. That was of course the famous Justice Munir Report about the anti-Ahmedi riots way back in 1953. Since then no important commission has ever conducted such a detailed investigation and then published its reports. The Justice Hamoodur Rehman Commission Report about what happened in 1971 was of course never officially published but was leaked many years later and by that time all the culpable individuals were long gone.

Considering the rate at which this ‘commission mania’ is sweeping Pakistan, soon we will have a commission or a panel to investigate almost everybody and everything. This might not be all bad if most of the senior judiciary, all members of parliament, most senior bureaucrats and policemen, much of the army brass and the really intelligent members of the ‘intelligentsia’ become part of some commission of inquiry. If these ‘really important’ people become involved in doing something as useful as finding reasons to blame somebody else besides themselves for all that is wrong, then that just might provide a chance for the ordinary people of Pakistan to fix the problems confronted by this country.

It is unlikely to happen at least in the near future but it would be ‘nice’ if some day the people of Pakistan did find out what all these commissions had found over all these years. I, for instance, would really like to know who assassinated Liaquat Ali Khan and why even if it does not really matter anymore.

The writer has practised and taught medicine in the US. He can be reached at smhmbbs70@yahoo.com