Every Pakistani knows the scene. A road is blocked without warning, a market is told to pull down its shutters, a neighbourhood is sealed off, and an ambulance waits in a queue of cars while a convoy of black vehicles sweeps past. Last week in Jhelum, the same reflex reached into an examination hall: intermediate Computer Science papers were pushed back three weeks because the chief minister was due to visit. Maryam Nawaz’s answer was swift. She removed the deputy commissioner, ordered the exam back to its original date, and told every senior police and administrative officer in Punjab that no shop, market or street should be closed for her visits. It was the right response. Now it needs to become the rule, not the exception.
The facts are simple. The Board of Intermediate and Secondary EducationThe provincial board that sets and runs matriculation and intermediate examinations for a group of districts. Rawalpindi’s board covers Jhelum. Rawalpindi had moved the Computer Science papers of the Intermediate Second Annual Examination in Jhelum district from Tuesday, November 10 to Monday, November 30, on the recommendation of the deputy commissionerThe senior civil servant in charge of a district’s administration, responsible for law and order, revenue and coordinating government departments.. The chief minister was expected to visit Jhelum and Pind Dadan Khan on November 10. A letter from the deputy commissioner’s office cited the visit and the traffic it was expected to cause, which “may cause inconvenience to the students and their parents”. The solution chosen was to inconvenience every student in the district instead.
What happened in Jhelum
“Despite my explicit instructions that no inconvenience or disruption whatsoever should be caused to the public during my visits to the districts, such an incident has nevertheless occurred,” Maryam Nawaz wrote. “This is a clear disregard for my directions.” Later the same day she said a message had “once again been sent” to all regional and district police officers, commissioners and deputy commissioners: no market, shop, business or other establishment was to be closed or asked to suspend its operations because of her visit; no residential street was to be blocked or sealed; and no restriction was to be placed on residents’ movement “under the pretext of security arrangements”. Security measures, she said, must be discreet. “These instructions must be followed in letter and spirit. Failing to comply will result in strict action.”
The solution chosen was to inconvenience every student in the district instead.
A reflex, not a plot
It would be easy to treat the Jhelum episode as one officer’s misjudgment. It is better understood as a reflex that runs through the whole of Pakistan’s administration. A district officer who learns that a chief minister, a federal minister or a foreign dignitary is coming knows two things. If anything goes wrong during the visit, he will be blamed. If ordinary citizens are inconvenienced to prevent it, almost no one will be. Every incentive points towards closing more roads, clearing more shops and sealing more streets than any real threat requires.
The result is a political culture in which the public pays for its leaders’ movements. Traders lose a day’s takings. Patients are turned back from hospital gates. Students miss papers, office workers miss shifts, and daily-wage labourers lose the only income they have. Each closure is small; together they add up to a daily lesson that the state exists to serve those who govern, rather than those who are governed. That is a lesson no government that wants public trust can afford to keep teaching.
Security is real, and no one should pretend otherwise. Pakistan’s leaders face genuine threats, and the police and intelligence agencies that protect them do difficult and dangerous work. But good security is precise. It is planned in advance, it uses the minimum disruption necessary, and it does not depend on emptying an entire town. The chief minister’s word for it, “discreet”, is the right one. The best protection is the kind the public barely notices.
From an order to a rule
Maryam Nawaz deserves credit for acting in public and acting fast. Removing an officer sends a message that a quiet reprimand would not. But orders issued after the fact, however firm, rely on the personal attention of one leader. The next deputy commissioner, in the next district, will still face the same incentives. What Punjab needs, and what every province and the federal capital need, is a written rule that makes the chief minister’s instructions the standard for everyone.
Such a rule would not be complicated. It could set out, in plain language, what may and may not be done for an official visit:
What a protocol rule could say
The point of a rule is that it binds those who come after. A deputy commissioner who is asked by a protocol officer to close a bazaar should be able to say no, and point to the rule. A provincial minister who expects the roads to empty for his convoy should know that the order to empty them must be written, justified and published. And the public should be able to see, after the event, what was closed, for how long and on whose instruction.
The best protection is the kind the public barely notices.
Protect the officers who say no
A rule will only work if the officers asked to enforce it are protected when they do. Today a district officer who refuses a request from a powerful visitor’s staff takes a personal risk; one who over-reacts takes almost none. That balance has to change. The chief minister’s message to Punjab’s officers is a start, because it tells them clearly which way to err. It should be followed by a promise that no officer will suffer for keeping a market open or an exam on schedule, and by training that treats minimal disruption as a professional skill rather than a lapse in caution.
There is also a simple matter of cost. Every closure has a price that is paid by people who are rarely asked: the shopkeeper who loses a day’s sales, the patient whose appointment slips, the family that misses a wedding because the road home is shut. Those costs are never counted, which is why they are so easy to impose. Counting them, even roughly, would change the conversation. A visit that saves an official fifteen minutes in traffic but costs a town a day of business is not a good trade, and a government that can see the numbers is less likely to make it.
Beyond Punjab
The problem is not Punjab’s alone. Islamabad and Rawalpindi have lived through repeated road closures this year as the capital hosted visiting delegations and high-level talks. Some of those closures were unavoidable, given the stakes and the threats involved. Many residents would say that some were not. Karachi’s commuters, Peshawar’s traders and Quetta’s schoolchildren could tell similar stories. A national standard, agreed by the federal government and the provinces, would spare each of them from depending on the goodwill of whichever official happens to be in charge.
Parliament and the provincial assemblies could help. Lawmakers who have themselves been stuck behind a convoy have every reason to ask how often their districts are shut down, and why. A simple annual report on official-visit closures, district by district, would show where the habit is worst and where it is improving. It would also give the public something it rarely gets: a record.
The students come first
In the end, the Jhelum case was about young people sitting an examination that would shape their future. They had prepared for a date, and the state moved it for reasons that had nothing to do with them. The chief minister was right to say that was unacceptable, and right to restore the date before they lost a single day. She has set a clear standard. A visit by a public servant should never cost the public a school day, a hospital appointment, a day’s trade or a free walk down their own street.
The test now is whether that standard survives the next visit, and the one after that. If the instructions sent to Punjab’s officers on Sunday are written into a rule, published and enforced, Jhelum will be remembered as the day the habit began to change. If they are not, it will be remembered as one more scandal that came and went. The chief minister has made a strong start. The rest of the government should follow her lead.
