Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the real PCB chairman after all?

Najam Sethi and Zaka Ashraf - File

There seems to be a serial string attached to the sham that the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) has become ever since Zaka Ashraf virtually elected himself as its chairman in dubious circumstances.

To understand this cat-and-mouse conundrum, one has to look back at the developments taking place at the PCB that have turned the country’s

richest sports body into a mere shadow of itself.

Zaka anointed himself as the first elected ‘supreme commander’ of the board on May 8 last year, only to be unseated 20 days later by an Islamabad High Court (IHC) ruling which ousted the Hyderabad-born tycoon in view of the questions raised about the legality of his appointment.

On June 13, the IHC upheld his suspension and ordered the PCB to name an interim chairman. Najam Sethi — a journalist who hosts a talk show at a private news channel — was appointed on June 23 as the interim PCB chief by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif who is also the board’s patron-in-chief.

But during what was to be Sethi’s first tenure, the court rejected on July 20 all key decisions made by him, while ordering the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) to conduct fresh elections for the post of PCB chairman. Four days later, the PCB filed an appeal against the decision.

In compliance with the court order, the ministry for inter-provincial coordination (IPC) on Sept 28 named Amir Tariq Zaman Khan as the PCB secretary — a position not mentioned in the board’s constitution.

The patron-in-chief decided on Oct 15 to dissolve the PCB’s governing board and formed a five-member interim management committee headed by Sethi.

The IHC on Oct 21 set Nov 2 as the deadline for the ECP to fill the chairman’s post before staying the election process on Nov 4 and allowing Sethi to keep on managing the PCB affairs.

On Dec 17 the court reserved its judgment on the PCB’s appeal against its July 20 ruling.

Zaka was reinstated as the board chairman on Jan 15 by the court only to be shown the door again on Feb 10 (the same the day he returned from Singapore where he attended the ICC Board meeting) by the prime minister who also dissolved the board of governors.

Just three days before his second reinstatement by the IHC, a PCB’s internal audit report said Zaka had committed serious financial irregularities during his 22-month tenure as chairman before his May 6 dismissal.

Coming to Saturday’s verdict given by the IHC, one finds it bewildering that the same forum which had suspended Zaka in May last year and ordered the PCB to reduce its surplus staff (some 68 employees appointed by him during his initial term) has reinstated 38 terminated employees.

Some of Zaka’s dealings with the ICC Board members were questioned by some. He was seen as a weak administrator because he was unable to counter the likes of ECB chief Giles Clarke and N. Srinivasan of the BCCI. In some quarters it was mentioned that Zaka turned up for his maiden ICC Board meeting some 45 minutes behind schedule.

And then he opted to oppose the controversial reforms of the world body at the ICC meeting earlier this year in Dubai after spurning, what Sethi claimed, an offer by India to join the so-called ‘big three’.

“The ‘big three’ of the ICC had invited Pakistan to be part of a ‘big four’ plan but the administration under former PCB chairman Zaka Ashraf refused the offer, to the detriment of the country,” Sethi had said before attending an ICC meeting last month.

Meanwhile, the people blowing the Zaka trumpet now have, remarkably, approached the IHC to seek justice. The question that now arises is: aren’t there high courts closer to where these gentlemen are based?

Retired Major Nadeem Suddle hails from Rawalpindi and he is entitled to seek justice from the Lahore High Court because Rawalpindi has a bench of the LHC. Of course, it is a totally different tale when we know that Major Suddle was a petitioner in the IHC against Zaka’s holding office and his petition was upheld.

But astonishingly the same gentleman, in what can be described as a 360 degree volte face, is litigating against the lawfully appointed Najam Sethi while siding with Zaka even though the government was within its rights to issue the SRO — as declared by the Supreme Court in its verdict.

The rest of the litigants come from hundreds of kilometres away. Rafiq Ahmed Bughio is from interior Sindh/Hyderabad; Haider Ali Talpur is from Hyderabad; retired Commodore Arshad Hussain is from Karachi. For them, the Sindh High Court in Karachi is the closest and cheapest way to seek ‘justice’. Instead they chose the IHC to file their cases.

The fourth petitioner is Amir Nawab, who is from Swabi. In normal circumstances the Peshawar High Court is closest for him, yet he chose Islamabad to seek relief.

The fifth petitioner, Zaka himself, is from Lahore and the sixth is Ahmad Nawaz from Multan. Is it a mere coincidence that all six made a beeline to the Islamabad High Court?

It is alarming also that the sacked PCB workers approached the IHC for a reprieve. They were neither appointed in Islamabad nor dismissed there. They were all based in Lahore or Punjab, mostly at the Gaddafi Stadium from where the Lahore High Court is less than 10km away, while the distance to the IHC is more than 350 kilometres.

Isn’t it true that when the PCB lawyers pointed this out to the honourable judge, they were ignored?

While a dismissed employee has every right under the Service Rules to challenge his/her dismissal, is it not rather odd that the sacked lot also end up challenging the composition of the PCB management committee and the SRO?

Perhaps there is a lot more to it than meets the eye. Also, who was financing the petitioners?

And what about the cardinal principle that both parties have to be heard before a judgement is arrived at? In this case the PCB was not heard, for the date of hearing on that particular issue, the validity of federal government’s SRO, was May 20.

Why was the court in such a big rush to decide everything in one judgement? The Sethi dispensation had been in place for a little more than three months. Decision on it could certainly have waited another for three days — for which a date had been fixed by the honourable judge.

The cricket fans may have little interest in who heads or runs the PCB but the general perception is that the game is suffering and that Pakistan has already become a laughing stock in the global cricketing fraternity.