Zoya Rehman

What colour is your passport? The Senate’s rush to grant lifetime Blue (official) Passports to Senators and their families is a brazen act of elite capture. Blue Passports give visa-free access to dozens of countries — a convenience ordinary Pakistanis holding Green Passports don’t receive. Roughly 70,000 Blue Passports are already in circulation, yet only about 40 have been issued to the country’s top private-sector taxpayers. Parliament passed this self-serving privilege in days, while laws that actually matter, on justice, public safety, education, health and environment, sit untouched. More than 2.2 million cases rot in courts, some for decades. Majority of our lawmakers come from elite families. Their hunger for still more lifelong benefits shows where their real priorities lie. I once held a Blue Passport as gov servant. After leaving a privileged, secured and pensionable gov job, I started from ground zero with a Green Passport to now among the top 8,000 taxpayers in a nation of 250 million. I have never been denied a visa on Green Passport. The difference isn’t colour of your passport. Contribution, not connections, is what matters and nation looks towards its leaders for the same. Pakistan is split into two classes: those who enjoys perks and privileges on taxpayers’ money and those who earn livelihood, create wealth, jobs and pay taxes. This must be reversed. Taxpayers and ordinary citizens deserve dignity and protection. Lawmen cannot continue to shield the powerful while punishing everyone else. That system has to end.