LAHORE: Punjab’s top bureaucrats could not elect their representative body and were forced to postpone their first-ever election because of the poor attendance of Pakistan Administrative Service (PAS) officers here on Sunday.
The PAS officials had decided to elect their representatives after the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) arrested their influential colleague, Ahad Cheema, for financial irregularities and misuse of authority.
“The elections have been deferred until next week,” announced retired Captain Zahid Saeed, chief secretary of the Punjab government, at the Officers’ Club in GOR-1.
In the absence of the electoral process, Sunday’s meeting of senior Punjab bureaucrats focused on “countering NAB’s excesses.” None of these officials was initially willing to believe that the country’s anti-corruption watchdog had arrested Cheema, who was counted among the favorite officers of the Punjab government and was a close confidant of Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif.
His arrest sent shockwaves not only through Punjab’s bureaucracy but also its political circles. As the director general of the Lahore Development Authority, Cheema had awarded hefty contracts — worth R14 billion — to a company allegedly owned by a ruling Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) leader.
The Punjab government had strongly reacted to the development, triggering a war of words with NAB officials.
“Ahad Cheema is a competent officer and has served the province for many years,” Punjab spokesperson Malik Ahmad Khan told Arab News. “The way he has been arrested by NAB is not tolerable.”
The province’s senior bureaucrats also interpreted the arrest as an attack against their institutional interests, making the chief secretary call a meeting of his PAS subordinates to discuss the future course of action.
During such deliberations, it was decided that the bureaucrats should form a representative body to protect their rights. Not only that, members of the province’s bureaucracy even went on strike to record their protest.
“The reaction of Punjab bureaucrats to Ahad Cheema’s arrest is unlawful,” said Aleem Baig Chughtai, a senior Supreme Court advocate. “They are afraid of their own arrests due to their misdeeds. The corrupt bureaucracy is in the clutches of the law for the first time, and many more senior officials are likely to be thrown behind bars in the coming days.”
Meanwhile, the embattled PML-N party views this development and the possibility of further arrests as another attempt of state institutions to mount pressure against the party’s top leadership. However, NAB officials view these developments differently.
“The Punjab bureaucracy is raising the uproar to malign NAB, divert attention from Cheema’s arrest, and save his political masters. Nobody is above the law. Cheema is guilty of corruption and we have got incriminating evidence against him that we will present in the court,” NAB’s focal person Nawazish Ali told Arab News.
Cheema’s arrest has deep political implications since PML-N’s rivals are using it as a weapon against the Sharifs.
“The decision of Punjab bureaucrats to go on strike is an act of mutiny,” said Aitzaz Ahsan of the Pakistan Peoples Party during a media talk in Lahore on Sunday.
Analysts maintain that the development has put the Punjab government and the ruling PML-N party in a difficult situation.
“Cheema’s detention is just the tip of the iceberg,” said Syed Shoaib-ud-Din Ahmad, an analyst with Waqt TV, told Arab News. “It is very likely that more senior bureaucrats will join the list of handcuffed prisoners in the coming days since many among their ranks are suspected of violating the law at the behest of politicians who have, in turn, been giving them patronage.”
Arrest of senior Pakistani bureaucrat bodes ill for country’s ruling party
Arrest of senior Pakistani bureaucrat bodes ill for country’s ruling party
Russia strikes power plant, kills four in Ukraine barrage
KHARKIV: Russia battered Ukraine with more than two dozen missiles and hundreds of drones early Tuesday, killing four people and pummelling another power plant, piling more pressure on Ukraine’s brittle energy system.
An AFP journalist in the eastern Kharkiv region, where four people were killed, saw firefighters battling a fire at a postal hub and rescue workers helping survivors by lamp light in freezing temperatures.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said “several hundred thousand” households near Kyiv were without power after the strikes, and again called on allies to bolster his country’s air defense systems.
“The world can respond to this Russian terror with new assistance packages for Ukraine,” President Volodymyr Zelensky wrote on social media.
“Russia must come to learn that cold will not help it win the war,” he added.
Authorities in Kyiv and the surrounding region rolled out emergency power cuts in the hours after the attack, saying freezing temperatures were complicating their work.
DTEK, Ukraine’s largest energy provider, said Russian forces had struck one of its power plants, saying it was the eighth such attack since October.
The operator did not reveal which of its plants was struck, but said Russia had attacked its power plants over 220 times since Moscow invaded Ukraine in 2022.
Daily attacks
Moscow has pummelled Ukraine with daily drone and missile barrages in recent months, targeting energy infrastructure and cutting power and heating in the frigid height of winter.
The Ukrainian air force said that Tuesday’s bombardment included 25 missiles and 247 drones.
The Kharkiv governor gave the death toll and added that six people were wounded in the overnight hit outside the region’s main city, also called Kharkiv.
White helmeted emergency workers could be seen clambering through the still-smoking wreckage of a building occupied by postal company Nova Poshta, in a video posted by the regional prosecutor’s office.
Within Ukraine’s second city, Kharkiv Mayor Igor Terekhov said a Russian long-range drone struck a medical facility for children, causing a fire. No casualties were reported.
The overnight strikes hit other regions as well, including southern city Odesa.
Residential buildings, a hospital and a kindergarten were damaged, with at least five people wounded in two waves of attacks, regional governor Sergiy Lysak said.
Russia’s use last week of a nuclear-capable Oreshnik ballistic missile on Ukraine sparked condemnation from Kyiv’s allies, including Washington, which called it a “dangerous and inexplicable escalation of this war.”
Moscow on Monday said the missile hit an aviation repair factory in the Lviv region and that it was fired in response to Ukraine’s attempt to strike one of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s residences — a claim Kyiv denies and that Washington has said it does not believe happened.
