EDITORIAL: The prime minister has ordered cutting back on official security provided to ministers, officials and important individuals, arguing if he could visit a few places in the capital without any security and protocol then why others cannot do the same. The government also should not spend its hard-earned finances that go into providing what is perceptively mere pomp and show, he added. He is said to have taken this position after a video of security detail of Minister of State Farrah Habib went viral on social media. But Information Minister Fawad Chaudhry reportedly doesn’t know why the prime minister took the notice.
In compliance with the prime minister’s decision, the Cabinet Division issued a notification, saying the police security provided to the Speaker National Assembly, some Federal Ministers and senior officials should be reduced from five to two, excepting security detail provided to the Chairman Senate. In a tweet, the prime minister also announced he was reviewing the protocol and security available to governors and chief ministers belonging to the ruling Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI). While reaction to his command at the federal level remains confused and Punjab and Balochistan governments have yet to speak on it the move is being severely criticised by the political opposition in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. The severest criticism comes from the Awami National Party (ANP) whose leadership faces genuine life threats, with party provincial president Aimal Wali Khan saying “we are not fond of security but the state had provided us guards due to serious threats… Such acts cannot demoralize us and we will continue fighting for the rights of the nation, even with more strength.” Also, ‘Elite cops’ force was withdrawn from Chairman Qaumi Watan Party Aftab Ahmed Khan Sherpao and provincial president of Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) Amir Muqam. According to PML-N president Shehbaz Sharif, the withdrawal of security is “criminal to say the least”, especially when Aftab Sherpao, Engineer Amir Muqam and Mian Iftikhar Hussain had already been attacked in the past.
Incisively, the PM’s order tends to suggest that protocol and security are one and the same thing while in today’s Pakistan these are unconnected, each having its own rationale. Protocol is the number of security guards provided to a minister or a high official at his residence and the number of security vehicles that join their escort. Such ‘pomp and show’ very often cause traffic jams. Security detail at the gate is also available to the retired senior officials and that number is in thousands. All of it lends air of pomp and show to the blessed individuals. This number should be reduced, and hopefully that would be done. But withdrawing security from political and religious leaders is extremely a dangerous proposition, particularly when in neighbouring Afghanistan a volcano of violence is about to burst. Most of the incidents of violence in Pakistan are output of the Afghan conundrum, and there is not much we in Pakistan can do to stop that volcano from bursting again. And, inescapably, we would be the vicarious victims of that violence. Also, given the growing incidence of shooting from moving motorbikes the two guards at the gate means nothing. So that being the backdrop the decision to withdraw security must be subjected to serious rethinking. The demon of insecurity must be fought and defeated at its very den. For that the government must go after the likely perpetrators of violence – be they religious zealots, hired assassins or foreign-funded agents.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2021
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