Punjab Chief Minister Maryam Nawaz transferred the DC of Jhang after a PeraForce vehicle was spotted traveling in the protocol convoy of MPA Saqib Chadhar, but the chief minister stopped short of asking the more fundamental question: on what authority was Saqib Chadhar entitled to a protocol convoy in the first place?
The transfer of a district officer made headlines. The MPA who triggered the entire episode walked away without anyone asking him a single question.
According to anchor Rae Saqib Khral, this is the real story unfolding across Punjab every day.
Protocol has become a fashion statement, not a security necessity. Across the province, MPAs and MNAs routinely travel with police escorts, motorcades and support vehicles as if they are heads of state moving through active conflict zones. Hundreds of police personnel are tied up at any given time accompanying elected representatives on constituency visits, official functions and, in many cases, purely personal travel.
These are the same police officers whose actual mandate is to protect ordinary citizens.
Punjab’s police force is stretched, under-resourced and overworked. Beat-level policing in mohallas and markets suffers while constables stand at the gates of MPAs’ homes or ride in their convoys. A citizen who needs a police response at 2am doesn’t get one because the officer who should be available is otherwise engaged, serving as a status symbol for an elected representative.
The argument that lawmakers face genuine security threats deserves serious consideration. But if the threat is real and personal, the solution is private security, not public resources. Every other category of at-risk Pakistani, from businessmen to journalists to judges, arranges personal protection at their own expense when they believe their safety requires it. There is no principled reason why elected officials should be exempt from that expectation.
MediaBites calls on Chief Minister Maryam Nawaz to do more than transfer a DC. The protocol system itself needs to be dismantled. A clear and enforceable directive should be issued: no MPA, no MNA, no minister receives a police escort at public expense unless a formally assessed and documented threat warrants it, reviewed case by case, not granted as a standing perk of office.
Punishing the official who allowed the paramilitary vehicle into Saqib Chadhar’s convoy was the easy move. Asking why Saqib Chadhar had a convoy at all would have been harder, and more important.
Punjab’s police exist to serve the public. That purpose is being quietly hollowed out, one protocol convoy at a time.
Credit: Anchor Rae Saqib Khral
