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PAKISTAN is astir with the talk of inquiries. Once again, calls for an inquiry are growing shriller following the naming of the prime minister’s family and others in the Panama leaks. Imran Khan, a great believer in opposition by inquiries, has led the charge. The beleaguered prime minister has agreed to a wide-ranging inquiry into the issues arising out of the Panama leaks and the associated loan default-related corruption.
Yet again, the shape and remit of the announced inquiry are being contested. Parallels are being drawn with other high-profile probes. Revisiting history, the Munir inquiry was set up to investigate the circumstances surrounding the anti-Ahmedi riots of 1953 and the imposition of the first-ever mini martial law in the affected areas. The findings, available in the now famous Munir Report, make for riveting reading.
The report tackled the question of what constitutes a Muslim. To the surprise of the inquiry, most experts, and religious leaders called up as witnesses, could not agree on the definition of a Muslim. In the absence of a coherent definition, religious leaders mobilised their flock in the crusade against the notion of a non-Muslim. The report shows, above all, how raw emotions around sentimental issues can be agitated to further certain political agendas. Since then, inquiries have become the staple of Pakistani politics.
Another landmark inquiry was constituted under Justice Hamoodur Rahman to delve into the causes behind the dismemberment of Pakistan. The inquiry, like the Munir Report, was a case of meticulous investigation. Yet its findings were suppressed until it was leaked in the 1990s. For the government of Pakistan, there was no choice but to make it public. The official version published was still a sanitised one.
The quality of inquiries has deteriorated.
Ever since these two major inquiries, the quality of inquiry reports seems to have deteriorated. A case in point is the Osama bin Laden inquiry instituted to determine the negligence of Pakistani institutions in letting US troops fly unchallenged into Abbottabad to eliminate bin Laden, and leave without facing any resistance. Five years on, we are no wiser as to what exactly happened on the night of the raid, though we can form some ideas from a string of articles by an investigative journalist.
However, we have yet to see publication of the inquiry report. From the leaked version, believed to be one of the many versions of the truth, it is quite clear the inquiry was part fuzzy, part illuminating. The same can be said about the Saleem Shahzad and Hamid Mir inquiries. The least that can be said about them is that the inquiries failed to find out what was obvious to the victims and the wider world.
This shows that public inquiries have become ineffective and deterioration is palpable not only in methodological rigour but also in the precision and quality of language, evidence-gathering and analytical and synthesis skills which contribute to improving policy and practice.
Inquiries as we know them in Pakistan are a holdover of British legal traditions. The practice of conducting public inquiries was inaugurated after the famous Marconi scandal in 1912 in Britain when huge kickbacks were allegedly paid to government ministers to secure lucrative deals. The parliamentary select committee, charged with finding out the truth, was bitterly divided along party lines, producing no clear conclusion. This failure led to the passage of the Tribunal of Inquiry Act 1921 which governed the operation of the public inquiry system until 2005 when it was replaced with the Inquiry Act 2005.
My own interest in the importance of public inquiry in policymaking dates back to my involvement in the Zahid Mubarek inquiry as a campaign team member pressing for an independent inquiry into the circumstances which led to the killing of Zahid Mubarek in a youth offender institution in London some years ago. I saw closely the operation and working of the inquiry when the government finally acceded to the demand for a public inquiry after a string of legal challenges.
The head of the inquiry, Justice Keith, was among the most meticulous, careful and thoughtful judges I have known.
The resulting report reflected this mindset in its language, robust evidence-gathering, rigorous analytical examination of the evidence and meticulous policy recommendation.
I also found that one test of the coherence, rigour and fairness of an inquiry report is how the probe fares on the stage. The dramatised version of the Zahid Mubarek inquiry made a huge impact. I think the Munir and Hamoodur Rahman reports can pass this test which other probes in Pakistan are likely to fail. The new inquiry into the Panama leaks should keep this litmus test in mind as well.
The writer is a development consultant and policy analyst.
Twitter: @arifazad5
Published in Dawn, May 11th, 2016
