Daily Times

It’s not like the dam fund was the first appeal for charity by a high office holder of Pakistan for patriotic endeavours. Nawaz Sharif, as the Prime Minister of Pakistan, in 1998 came up with the idea of “qarz utaro, mulk sunwaro” scheme. The people of Pakistan were urged to donate in helping the government of Pakistan rid itself of external debt for once and for all. His archnemesis and the man behind the overthrow of his government, Pervez Musharraf, continued his legacy by asking the Pakistani people to donate to the President’s relief fund after the 2005 earthquake. However, what was surprising about the dam fund was that this time, it was the apex court, which had asked for donations and not a political leader.

Let’s first address the merits of building a dam. Pakistan reached the “water scarcity line” 14 years ago in 2005. It was by then that major decisions were required to be taken if we did not want an absolute scarcity of water by 2025. Since then, no strategic decisions were taken to conserve water. According to expert estimates, Pakistan’s water resources will dry up by 2025. If these facts are considered, one can easily conclude that the setting up of the dam fund was a well-meaning initiative by the then Chief Justice of Pakistan, who had deposited one million Pakistani rupees in the fund he created. Maybe, these were the circumstances due to which the current Prime Minister of Pakistan, Imran Khan, had lauded the Chief Justice of Pakistan by saying that he was doing the job that the civilian leaders should have done long ago. The Prime Minister became the other chief pleader for donations to the dam fund, going as far as asking overseas Pakistanis to deposit at least $1,000 for the noble cause.

Between then and now, however, the dam fund has besmirched the people in high places asking for donations. The campaign for the dam fund was launched will full zeal and zest. Banks had hung banners outside their branches asking people to donate while network service providers had sent their customers messages urging them to donate. However, these subtle attempts to encourage people to donate started to become coercive and sinister with the passage of time, first through directions to PEMRA that free ads are run on TV channels, then through levying fines on people while hearing actual cases to be submitted in the dam fund and the threat of contemplating on starting treason proceedings against those who felt that the Supreme Court was breaching its constitutional domain.

Yet, that was all the Supreme Court was doing. At the Lahore Literary Festival earlier this year, the ex-Chief Justice of Pakistan, Saqib Nisar, was asked about the huge gap between the money required for the building of the actual dams and the meagre amount compared to it, which people had been goaded into contributing. It is worth mentioning here that the ads that prompted the dam fund often talked of the reward in the hereafter. Many institutions had, as a matter of policy, forcibly cut salaries of their officers to contribute to the dam fund. These included both heavily financed institutions like the army and the meagerly funded Pakistan Football Federation. The ex-Chief Justice answered that the funds were collected only for awareness and not for the actual building of the dam. This burst the dam funds bubble, at the hands of its chief architect. It is also worth noting here that the dam fund has by now collected about 11 billion Pakistani rupees, however, the worth of free advertisements run on the media platforms equal 13 billion Pakistani rupees worth of airtime.

Some people excessively underestimate the consequences of the judicial institution breaching its constitutional domain

Some people excessively underestimate the consequences of the judicial institution breaching its constitutional domain. Look at Pakistan Railway’s unconstitutional and illegal levying of dam fund charges on its tickets. While the federal minister Shaikh Rasheed has not performed, and railway accidents have become a norm, nobody could challenge his arbitrary decision of recovering extortions for dam funds from the poorest strata of society simply because the Supreme Court was backing the dam fund itself. If the Apex court had not backed the initiative itself it would not take much for the court to strike down the charges as forced donations levied as a result of taking irrelevant considerations into account and without the consent of the Parliament, which has the institutional responsibility of deciding on taxes.

The money already lying in the dam fund has been brutally mismanaged. It does not take one long to realise that lawyers and judges are not finance experts and should not act as such. After reports were published that the dam fund was losing Rs 10 million per day, the Supreme Court ordered to temporarily invest the dam fund in the National Bank of Pakistan. It was later to be invested in treasury bills by the government. According to the website of the Supreme Court, the last such investment was made on October 10, 2019. Even then, there is money lying in the NBP account, which has not yet been invested.

The dam fund has come full circle. People who had contributed to the fund were defrauded as to what was the actual purpose of their contributions? The people had donated for the building of the dam and not awareness for it. There is still a huge gap between the money required for building the dam and the money currently collected. This serves as a stark reminder that the judiciary should remain within its domain for they do not have the intellectual and institutional capacity to partake in decisions, which include economic and resource allocation policies, no matter how well-meaning.

According to the website of the Supreme Court of Pakistan, no real donations have been made to the fund since July this year. It is high time now that the Supreme Court overturns the decision creating the dam fund and deciding on how to utilise the money already collected. We cannot close our eyes to the dam fund just because of the passage of time.

The writer is a barrister, who has an interest in Pakistani current affairs, economy, constitutional developments, foreign policy and international law