PAKISTAN
By Manzoor Shaikh
He seemed pretty confident, anticipating that his reform rhetoric would lead him to duck through the hard nuts present in the governing body of his council. Instead, he was shackled, finding himself besieged by several GB members who held him so tight that he found nothing to do but surrender to the demands they made. Yes, he was Engr. Waseem Nazir, the chairman of the Pakistan Engineering Council (PEC), whose imprudent leadership style and deep wish to make his own show has brought the council of over 300,000 engineers to the brink of dormancy — a scenario the PEC has never experienced over the last many decades.
The pressure at the last moot of the GB was so high that his tactic to invite the members to the scenic northern settlement of Bhurban to woo them failed miserably. Members hailing from The Engineers Pakistan (TEP) and even some from his ally, The National Engineers Association (NEA), pushed him to realize that his authoritarian style was not helping in resolving the issues of engineers across Pakistan or in running the affairs of the council. “One member of the GB allegedly asked him if he deemed himself ‘Trump’,” a participant divulged to the Engineering Review.
Engr. Nazir, now history’s only chairman of the PEC besieged by the members of the GB, has already allegedly become notorious for his famous words: “Don’t worry, I am doing everything.” “Even his allies are fed up with his response to the demand of running the council in an inclusive manner,” said a GB member.
The information collected by Engineering Review about the proceedings of the Governing Body Meeting at Bhurban suggests that there are five striking aspects of the moot.
One, that Engr. Nazir had attempted to emulate the past practice of keeping significant demands of the members under the carpet.
Two, he tried to usurp all powers of the governing body, which, as per law, has to run the affairs of the council. He has also been exposed as an unwanted interventionist in the decisions of his own working groups, which have now become dysfunctional. “A convenor of one of the working groups says he does not allow us to work smoothly and keeps on intervening, although he has no experience of running the council at all.”
Three, his allies — NEA — failed to silence their members, who went on to press their genuine demands.
Four, the GB was exposed to an alleged unlawful practice of tampering with the minutes of the meetings. “The minutes of the meetings are tampered with many times, and we are witnesses to such practices,” claimed a member.
Five, the real pre-GB show was stolen by the arch-rival of Engr. Nazir, Engr. Jawed Salim Qureshi, who had arranged a dinner in Murree for GB members hailing from his group.
It’s evident that the chairman, who left Bhurban as an unhappy man, was forced to concede to some of the governing body’s demands. He accepted the constitution of a committee to look into issues relating to the promotion and extension given to the registrar of the council. Also, he surrendered to the demand that the regional office of the council should not be shut down.
No matter how much Engr. Nazir insists that he is the chairman of all engineers, as there is “no politics after the elections” — both his friends and foes played real politics and worked hard to assert the power of the governing body around the GB meeting in Bhurban. He lured Engr. Qadir Shah to neutralize Engr. Mukhtiar Shaikh, and ironically, both contemptuously joined hands to strangulate him, as the former succeeded in getting an unnecessary coordination committee, and the latter scared him by writing to the registrar for initiating the impeachment of the chairman.
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