RPP fallout

The RPP saga has reeked of all that is distasteful since the beginning, and the stench has progressively worsened, all the way to the supreme court and NAB. News reports of the bureau moving to arrest 33 people involved, including former finance minister Shaukat Tareen, imply the investigation has clearly not been thorough. And that the charge relates to approving the project as chairman of the cabinet’s ECC means a miscarriage of justice is imminent unless saner heads prevail.
Word did rounds in Islamabad at the time of Mr Tareen’s stiff opposition to the plants, to the point of roughing up a couple of cabinet meetings, threatening to resign if his demands regarding audit were not met. It was his effort that brought about the project’s reassessment. These are facts the investigation must have been aware of. And no matter how strongly subsequent events have vindicated his apprehensions, the whole matter’s unraveling has cast him in ironic, unfair light.
A far fairer way forward would have been giving his concerns a more sincere look, especially since he has been the only high profile government official to look seriously enough into the matter to propose an Integrated Energy Plan. He was the first to raise alarm over the deteriorating position of the existing energy mix. He constituted a high-level team to investigate the prospect of an efficient overhaul, pressuring the planning commission to participate, eventually presenting a detailed energy plan. His position on hydro-power generation units, not to mention his ambitious nine-point agenda, deserve a serious official rethink, as does the decision to apprehend him and parade his name across the ECL.