There are always contradictions when you blindly keep on trying to
negate a fact. There is a proverb that for one lie you have to tell 10
or may be more lies. Similar has been the situation with our rulers
and the establishment, both in Islamabad and Gilgit, who try to twist
the facts in accordance with their own vested interests. For the last
over six decades, they have been hoodwinking the local population as
well the international community in order to conceal the rampant human
rights violations and continuation of Pakistan’s illegal occupation of
the region.
Soon after coming to power in Pakistan, the present PPP government
started claiming that the people of Gilgit-Baltistan would be given
all their rights that had been denied to them for the last over six
decades. Then the rulers came up with the 2009 package with the tall
claim that Gilgit-Baltistan had been given the status of a province
with its chief minister and the cabinet members having rights equal to
those enjoyed by their counterparts in other provinces of the country.
The local stooges of the rulers in Islamabad jumped to the bandwagon
trying to be more loyal than the king and telling their masses that
whatever they had been fighting for had been given to them in a
platter by the champion of democracy and people’s welfare.
But things unfolding since then have negated all the claims and the
people of the region are now 100 per cent sure that the situation on
the ground has even gone from bad to worse since the PPP came to power
and the new package was implemented in the region. And the so-called
chief minister and his cabinet’s worth has already been exposed.
Leaving all other things aside, Thursday’s meeting in Islamabad was
the last knell in the coffin of the claims that we have got the powers
of a province. A grade-22 officer of Pakistan, Salman Farooqui,
presided over the meeting held at the President House purportedly to
discuss the development issues of Gilgit-Baltistan. Strangely, this
meeting was attended among others by the ‘chief minister’ of
Gilgit-Baltistan Mehdi Shah along with his cabinet members. (A
‘cabinet’ meeting chaired by a bureaucrat with all the ministers and
the chief minister in attendance?)
The meeting discussed issues relating to the blockade of the Karakoram
Highway due to the Attabad lake outfall and the drainage of the lake
water. It may be noted that around 22-km portion of the vital highway
remains blocked due to the artificial lake and the meeting decided
that work on the construction of an alternate road would be expedited
which would also include digging of a five-km-long tunnel. The project
would be completed at a cost of Rs23 billion which has already been
approved by ECNEC (the Executive Committee of the National Economic
Council). The meeting also decided that all available help would be
sought from China in clearing out the water from the artificial lake
at Attabad. In the meanwhile, contract for the reconstruction of the
Gilgit-Skardu road has been awarded to the National Highway Authority
and the Frontier Works Organization.
There had been a propaganda going of sorts regarding the meeting at
the President House for the last many weeks and was tried to make the
people of Gilgit-Baltistan believe that President zardari was taking
keen interest in the development of the region and wanted to expedite
the process of development in the region and, therefore, the meeting
was going to be held in the President House. But it was never thought
that the meeting would be chaired by a bureaucrat instead of the
president of Pakistan. This, among other things, also laid bare the
fact how much importance Pakistan gives to its own claim that GB had
been given the status of a province. Can any chief minister of a
province in Pakistan come to the presidency along with his whole
cabinet to attend a meeting chaired by a civil servant? We do not need
to go further to rubbish the claim of Pakistan and its stooges in
Giglit-Baltistan that the region has been given provincial status or
its chief minister has the powers like any other chief minister in the
country. Period.
It is also shameful how the chief minister of GB had very recently
made tall claims that he was the chief minister of a province and the
federal government even cannot get a bureaucrat working in his
province transferred without his consent. Actually, it was the federal
government which used the dummy chief minister to fulfil its own
objective. Hussain Asghar was transferred to Gilgit-Baltistan as the
inspector general of police after the federal government wanted to
stop him from investigating the NICL scandal on the directive of the
Supreme Court of Pakistan. When the apex court asked the federal
government to bring back Asghar from GB to continue the probe, the
federal government maintained that the provincial government of GB was
not releasing the officer saying Islamabad cannot force Gilgit to send
the officer back.
It is humiliating not only for the cabinet of the region but for all
the people of the region that the whole lot of the government was
called to Islamabad to attend a meeting chaired by a bureaucrat. If
this bureaucrat is transferred to Gilgit-Baltistan he would have to
work under the chief minister. Besides, all the development works
discussed in the meeting were already approved by ECNNEC and there was
nothing new to make so much propaganda for it.