Alvi fallout

The fallout from President Alvi’s Sunday revelation will likely carry on this week. For those still unclear on what happened: on Sunday, President Dr Arif Alvi accused his staff of “undermining” his orders to send two bills – Official Secrets (Amendment) Bill, 2023, and the Pakistan Army (Amendment) Bill, 2023 – back to parliament as he disagreed with them, saying his staff lied to him and did not actually send the bills back. A day after these serious accusations, the President’s Secretariat said that the services of Secretary to President Waqar Ahmed were no longer required and asked his services be surrendered to the Establishment Division with immediate effect. Now the officer in question, Waqar Ahmed, has written an official letter in response to the president’s request, claiming that both the bills were submitted to the president but that the president neither assented nor gave any written instructions to return the bills for reconsideration. Mr Ahmed has also said that the files pertaining to the bills are still lying in the president’s office, and has requested the president order an inquiry by the FIA or any other agency in this regard. There is little doubt that an inquiry/ investigation is indeed needed. The secretary has said that if called by any court, he is ready to present evidence to prove his assertion.

In light of Monday’s communications, it would be odd to not opt for a more indepth look into what really transpired in the time between the president allegedly asking his staff to return the bills and when he decided to tweet his complaint. Sunday’s tweet/post had already ignited a debate over why the president had first used social media about this issue but not taken any action against his staff. That issue now having come and stood front and centre of the situation, this will need an investigative fact-check. The president saying that his staff are not following his instructions is not a small matter. The staff then saying that the president’s claims are not in keeping with what happened is even more alarming and one wonders how the affairs of the presidency can be run in this manner.

While most legal experts are of the opinion that it is not possible that the president’s assent is deemed even if he had not sent the bills back – and this matter for the most part is something constitutional lawyers are united on – there are some valid questions about Alvi’s tweet/post as well. For example, why the delay in posting? (It had been more than 24 hours since news had broken that the president had ‘signed’ the two bills). There is also the matter of the president also seemingly seeing both the laws as laws and not as yet-to-be-passed bills. All in all, this recent controversy has not only led to a lot of legal confusion, but also procedural queries: why was no action initiated against the president’s staff before the matter was taken to X (former Twitter)? Even now, there is no clarity on what actually happened, though we now have one side’s written account of what they say is the truth. Analysts say that under the rules of business, verbal instructions can be tricky and thus an inquiry needs to be initiated to get to the bottom of this matter. PML-N and PPP politicians have taken this as an opportunity to ask the president to resign, something they may want to perhaps not be too gleeful about given the rather controversial nature of the two laws they are bent on defending. Nevertheless, while it may be difficult, it is important to look at these as two separate matters: one, the nature of the laws under debate and whether they should be passed or not; two, the details of whether or not the president approved these laws. If he did not, it should not be too difficult to get to the bottom of this matter. And if indeed it is found that the president of Pakistan has no authority in his own secretariat then that is an issue far more grave for the state, the government and the people.