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.”