The world was fixated with Coronavirus, computing human and economic losses. For Mansoor Hassan Siddiqui summons from the Almighty came in a different form: a weird gas explosion at home. He was rushed to PIMS and the Doctors there did all they could but God’s Will is supreme. Mansoor breathed his last on 26 March,2020.
Mansoor, an Executive Director at the State Bank, was seconded to the Financial Monitoring Unit (FMU) when Financial Action Task Force (FATF) put the gun to our economic temple, asking us to put our act together, or else…
The government knew the threat was real and the consequences too dire to be left to our default response: ‘we can talk our way out of it’. It realized the only way to ward off the threat was to get serious about it. To do that it needed to put together a team that was as committed to the task as it was able. As Minister Hammad Azhar said in his touching condolence message, Mansoor was the mainstay of our response preparation. He was the single constant factor in this laudable team effort, since Asad Umar passed the FATF baton on to Hammad Azhar. Mansoor was there at every single meeting of the Asia-Pacific Joint Group as well as the plenary, from Canberra to Beijing to Paris. Wherever and whenever FATF wanted to grill Pakistan Mansoor, the faceless bureaucrat, was there to provide his team with facts and figures to demonstrate progress; to put up a stout defence.
Back home he would don his fatigues to go chase the various agencies that were not moving fast enough. His job was to try to make sure there was enough evidence-based material to convince FATF that Pakistan was in earnest. With the authorities at home his case always was that Pakistan needed to take all the measures - from Anti-money laundering to terror financing to documentation - in its own interest. Pakistan needed to do all that even if there was no FATF.
He died on the job, quite literally with his boots on. That fateful morning he was setting out to prepare the latest brief! The business community often interacted with him in his different capacities at the State Bank. At one time he was also looking after export business. He did not always do what we wanted him to do but we respected him for being truthful: he wouldn’t string us along, making promises that couldn’t be fulfilled. He was invariably polite and helpful but when something could not be done he would say so in so many words.
Speaking the truth is not always appreciated. Not in society at large and very rarely within the bureaucracy where the training is to toe the line. Mansoor often paid the price. The last one was when as Director Human Resource he had the temerity to tell the Governor what the Governor did not want to hear. Retribution was swift: he was consigned to NIBAF, State Bank’s Siberia in Islamabad for the recalcitrant. It couldn’t have been an easy exile, leaving behind in Karachi his wife and single child who was preparing for her ‘A’ levels!
Mansoor apparently knew the perils of straight talking. His last words to his family were “please apologise to everyone who I might have hurt”. He knew how having a differing point of view can be misunderstood; how differences of opinion create divides that could, quite unintendedly, hurt people.
From what his family tells us Mansoor’s truly happy moments did not come from his career advancements at the State Bank. What thrilled him most was this letter from the Vice Chancellor LUMS, his alma mater, recognizing his achievements as a distinguished alumnus. Incidentally, in a private conversation Mansoor is reported to have said LUMS was no less than Harvard University, where he had gone for post-grad work at the Kennedy school. No small praise for LUMS!
Wonder what would be his reaction to the outpouring of accolades from the world of FATF. The President of FATF said ‘he was an incredible asset to the Pakistan delegation, with his profound knowledge of the FATF standards and his passion to improve Pakistan’s anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing regime“. The US treasury, several Ambassadors, FATF Secretariat spoke in similar vein, lauding him for his professionalism and commitment.
We suspect he would have merely drawered them and moved on. It wasn’t an easy life, being away from his wife and daughter, now an undergrad at Sussex that he would visit whenever he could, laden with Nehari and kebabs. His mission in life, what really drove him, was to get Pakistan off the grey list.
But this is not a eulogy for Mansoor the person; but Mansoor the public servant. It is interesting how we applaud public service but reserve the choicest expressions for the public servant. Partly it is their own doing - they have let us down so often that our view of them has become clichéd. Largely it is because rubbishing those who wield power gives us a vicarious pleasure. We all thought it was such a touching gesture for the Police to present the guard of honour to Doctors and nurses. Are we sure we will hold the medical profession - or for that matter the Police force - in the same high esteem once things revert to business as usual? As a columnist and commentator we plead guilty to being quick on the draw, never hesitating to pillory the public servant. We are guilty of not recognizing the good ones while ever-ready to crucify them as a class. Do we have to wait for the passing away of a committed public servant to remind us of our folly; of our failure to salute those who serve us against all odds?
We cannot aspire to good public service if we constantly ridicule the public servant. Let’s try to change that. One way of doing it would be to confer civil awards on them. Not while they are in service - it will lead to award becoming the objective, and not public service in its finest traditions. Let’s do it when they have retired or gone for natural causes. Let’s have a special category for civil servants who serve beyond the call of duty.
Mansoor will make a deserving case. [email protected]
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