Published in Daily Times on January 26, 2020
It’s the kind of thing
that has been happening for centuries and usually doesn’t raise eyebrows.
Someone sees a plot of land lying vacant for a long time, finds out that the
owner is poor, or dead or out of the country, and then occupies it. In this
highly corrupt country, he is usually able to get land records manipulated to
show that he is the owner. If the real owner is lucky, someone informs him and
he gets a stay order to prevent construction on the plot. But usually he finds
out only when a house has been built and people are living in it. Sometimes the
illegal occupier offers him a pittance for the land (about a tenth of its
value), but mostly he is contemptuously ignored. Knowing that it will take up
to thirty years to get relief from the courts and he could well be dead by
then, he decides not to take any legal action, cursing the day he was born.
It wouldn’t be out of place to mention here that many mosques in
Karachi are built on illegally occupied land. Immediately after the illegal
occupation, a small mosque is built, then a house comes up where the land
grabbing mullah can live with his wives and children. The poor owner has no
choice but to forget that he ever owned the plot.
But today we have an
interesting case which involves two confidants of Mr Clean himself. One is
Mohammed Mian Soomro (minister for privatisation), the other is (ironically)
the Accountability Czar, whose brother is the alleged occupier, while the
claimant is a nephew of the minister. A senior government official was asked to
investigate the matter and he determined that the brother of the accountability
advisor (Shehzad Akber) got the land record manipulated in his favour. Guess
what happened? The senior government official was immediately transferred! It
should be interesting to know how this drama turns out, and whose side the
Great Khan will take. But knowing that he has too much on his plate right now,
perhaps he will tell the two parties to reach a settlement.
In the meantime, the
flamboyant minister for water (Vawda) is in the news again. It seems he was a
dual national when he submitted the papers to contest the National Assembly
elections against Shahbaz Sharif (he was able to persuade the court not to
order a recount, despite winning by only 723 votes). In the signed affidavit to
the Electtion Commission, he declared under oath that he didn’t have any other
nationality except Pakistani. Perhaps he didn’t know that it’s a serious
matter, as he contemptuously said, “Please go ahead” when a reporter asked him
for his version before printing the story. Perhaps he was confident that his
crime would be overlooked, maybe he even thought he could get the process of
disqualification postponed indefinitely (you know, like the PTI foreign funding
case). And if you tell about this to any PTI followers (the few of them who are
still around, that is), they say, “So what? He later applied for cancellation
of his US citizenship, didn’t he?” But the really puzzling thing is why he
should have applied for US citizenship in the first place. When you see that he
owns very expensive motorcycles and cars worth many millions, he’s not the kind
of person who would want to go and live in another country and work for a
living.
And finally, here’s a piece of news that shouldn’t surprise
anyone. The country grew more corrupt after the Laadla was thrust upon us to
ruin our lives. Remember how he used to say that he would eliminate corruption
in ninety days? No comment!
The writer is an engineer, a former
visiting lecturer at NED Engineering College
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