A petition filed by Advocate Jahangir Jadoon in the Islamabad High Court contains three extremely disturbing contentions. First and foremost, that Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, like his predecessors including Yousaf Raza Gilani and Raja Pervez Ashraf, acknowledged that there are severe gas shortages in the country, especially during the winter months, which require a moratorium on new gas connections. The objective: to forestall massive gas shedding in the country on all consumers. This admission accounts for a moratorium on new gas connections by Gilani in 2010 and Nawaz Sharif in 2013 for a period of two years.
Secondly, both Nawaz Sharif and Gilani allowed significant exemptions to their own moratorium for purely political purposes. The petitioner has provided an entire list of those granted exemptions, which include several federal ministers, including the Minister for Petroleum and Natural Resources Shahid Khaqan Abbasi who, no doubt, submitted a summary for a moratorium to the cabinet for approval on the one hand and a request for exempting his constituency from the moratorium on the other.
Additionally, Captain Safdar, the Prime Minister's son-in-law, Khawaja Asif, Abid Sher Ali, Rana Tanvir, Saira Afzal Tarar, Barjees Tahir, Akram Khan Durrani, and Maulana Fazlur Rehman, regarded as a key coalition partner by the Sharif administration, received exemptions for gas connections to their constituencies. Several influential MNAs of the PML-N also succeeded in getting exemptions from the Prime Minister. All in all, 35 cases of exemptions were cited in the petition and were extended to un-served areas in constituencies of influentials - a decision that has obvious positive implications on the re-election bid of those granted a moratorium. Ignored were the severe gas shortages that were subsequently faced by existing consumers.
And finally, the petitioner has argued that as per 18th August 2016 Supreme Court verdict the "constitution does not permit the use/allocation of funds to MNAs/notables at the sole discretion of the prime minister or the chief minister. If there is any practice of allocation of funds to the MNAs/MPAs/notables at the sole discretion of the prime minister/chief minister, the same is illegal and unconstitutional." However, while this particular judgment supports the democratic principles of collective responsibility of the entire cabinet yet, given the nature of internal democracies within our political parties with the leadership not changing over decades and all major decisions taken by the leader alone, getting approval from the cabinet would hardly be a challenge for the prime minister; and this would remain the relevant factor quite irrespective of the rationality of the prime minister's decision. The Attorney General, however, has maintained that there are certain discretions of the prime minister than cannot be undone. However, the 35 exemptions granted by the Prime Minister were no doubt dated prior to the Supreme Court's 18th August 2016 judgment.
This newspaper has been in the forefront advising all administrations, past as well as the present, to take essentially economic decisions based on economic rationale and not on political considerations. Sadly, that tendency appears to not have been abandoned and the entire country continues to be subjected to suffer the consequences of such political decisions that include failure to achieve the country's productive capacity as well as sustaining the quality of life of the common man.