KARACHI – The Sindh Assembly’s resolution on providing permanent employment to contractual workers of the Education Department will probably hog headlines today, but it was another matter that caught my attention: the “consideration” of the Sindh Public Private Partnership (Amendment) Bill-2011.
The initial rationale for a need of an amendment to the bill, as presented by Finance Minister Murad Shah, was watertight. The logic was that the finance minister and the law minister needed to be on the policy board – finance needed to ascertain money flows, and law to ensure that no legal requirements were out of order.
The second part was where the amendment became interesting. The finance minister argued that two members of the Sindh Assembly were to be inducted into the policy board, but there was no proper mechanism for that. The chief minister, therefore, was to be empowered to nominate two MPAs. Things were smooth till then with Speaker Nisar Khuhro grilling Finance Minister Shah and Law Minister Ayaz Soomro over the rationale for presenting the amendment.
An unassuming Dr Ahmed Ali Shah, a seemingly sincere and honest MPA from Naushero Feroze, stood up and informed Khuhro that the actual situation was different. “Sir, the chief minister has already nominated me, and one other member from the opposition,” Shah said. Soomro subsequently gestured wildly to ask him to shut up, but the cat was out of the bag.
While the matter of providing permanent employment to contractual workers of the Education Department has gone through rigorous debate to ensure all legal formalities, the Sindh government is very selective on the application of law. The matter of nomination of two MPAs is perhaps less significant in the overall scheme of things in a province still reeling with the affect of floods, it is nonetheless a violation of law for the chief minister to be making nominations when there was no provision for him doing so.
At a time when the Assembly is struggling to find matters of public importance to legislate and debate, surely the matter could have been brought up earlier. Progress on the matter of providing permanent employment to contractual workers of the Education Department has been slow, but disregarding legal provisions in nominating MPAs has been even slower. Criminally so, in fact.
An MPA recently commented: “politics is the art of possibilities.” If you were ever in doubt, take a cue from Law Minister Soomro: law can brazenly be bulldozed, if only it is given legal cover later on. “Everything is an open secret nowadays,” as Law Minister Soomro often likes to say. Indeed sir, indeed!
