The Guns of Gilani
Breaking News: PM Gilani can actually govern Pakistan.
Yes I know its a shock for many readers to read the above statement and many will have fallen off their respective chairs by now. And so I will repeat the breaking news that the Prime Minister of Pakistan, Syed Yousaf Raza Gilani can actually govern!
The evidence of such a tall claim and some may say a wild allegation has come via an investigative report by Kamran Khan which proves that the PM personally and his government as a whole have excelled in the governance of issuing guns or weapon licences for countless prohibited weapons.
PM Gilani’s health scandal as covered in my last post here shamed him and his office. The PM has scored a brace now by once again shaming his high office by personally ensuring licenses were given for prohibited weapons against all norms and rules. Given such weapons are after all prohibited to one and all, the entire episode shows the respect the chief executive has for rules and worse his open contempt for the rule of law.
Worse the PM has added to the woes of the macho state of Pakistan which is already awash with guns galore, for now the nation has new toys to play shoot and kill with, thanks to the good governance that Prime Minister Gilani has promised to the masses. Instead of providing security and sanity to a nation terrorised by the guns of terrorists, the PM has wilfully presided over the arming of a nation already armed to its teeth.
In such an instance ”The Guns of Gilani’ and not Navarone come to mind. Kamran Khan details the governance of the Gilani gunshop and the report is shared below:
Arm Merchants in Rs20 Billion Trade
Since the last week of March 2008, more than 38,800 people have been issued licences of prohibited weapons such as Kalashnikov, MP5, G3 and Uzi, mostly on direct orders of the prime minister and minister of state for interior.
Most alarmingly, these licences were issued without any police verification or an official check on the background of the applicants, according to an investigation by this correspondent. A whopping 100,000 licences of non-prohibited bore weapons, such as revolvers and pistols, were also issued without any police verification whatsoever during the same 21-month period.
There is no formal or official procedure in the country for a common Pakistani to properly apply for a prohibited bore weapon license other than finding a member of the National Assembly or the Senate having direct connections with the prime minister or minister of state for interior for the approval of license, hence prohibited bore licenses are a precious commodity and arms dealers charge a premium of up to Rs 200,000 for such a license.
Sources in arms dealers’ community estimate liberal issuance of prohibited and non-prohibited weapons licences by the government since April 2008 has generated Rs 20 billion business for weapons dealers in sale of automatic, semi-automatic weapons in addition to massive earnings in selling the prohibited and non-prohibited licences of weapons. The situation also raised serious questions about the exact source of weapon supplies to arms dealers.
Massive monetary attraction, besides other reasons, may have contributed to immense pressure on Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani from parliamentarians to favour them with his special powers to issue licences for all sorts of weapons.
As parliamentarians pressed the prime minister for more and more licences, he introduced an unprecedented quota of weapons licences in September last year by allowing 25 licences per year of prohibited weapons and 20 licences per month of non-prohibited weapons for each member of the National Assembly and the Senate. He extended the favour to MPAs also by allotting them five prohibited weapons licenses per year.
Since March 2008 till June 2009, the prime minister ordered issuance of 22,541 licences of prohibited weapons, mostly making orders on plain papers with certain names scribbled on them presented to him by various MNAs and senators.
In two months after assuming the office of minister of state for interior in April 2009, Tasnim Ahmed Qureshi issued a record 5,986 licences of prohibited weapons, including more than 100 licences that ended up at the Inter Risk (Pvt) Ltd, the security company contracted by the United States Embassy in Pakistan. Inter Risk owners are now facing prosecution for possessing a large cache of illegal weapons.
Qadir Nawaz, the personal secretary of the minister of state for interior, was arrested in the case, while the issuance of about 6,000 prohibited weapons licences in just two months on the direct order of the minister of state is still being probed by the relevant agencies.
This incident caused uproar in the government security services about the scale of corruption and security risks in weapons license system. The prime minister, though rejected allegations of ministerial level involvement in the weapons scam, announced a ban on issuance of licences in June last year.
“If parliament believes in accountability, justice and fair play, it should allow a neutral and thorough probe into the prohibited weapons license case and examine who were those 39,000 people whose names were recommended by various senators and MNAs for Kalashnikovs and Uzis licences as well as those 100,000-plus people who received licences for pistols and revolvers,” said an interior ministry official.
Kudos to ATP and Adil Najam who has led the focus on the issue as shown here and deplored the acts of the PM in issuing so many weapon licences. To end I will echo Adil’s last sentence, do stop issuing the licences Mr Prime Minister!
