PASSPORT and visa issues continue to occupy our leaders. The latest evidence of this came on Friday when members of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly passed a resolution demanding the passport of officialdom. The move was stamped by a rare show of camaraderie among the members, and divisions at home and in the house were forgotten in favour of shared, apparently cherished, international destinations. Members belonging to both the treasury and the opposition benches readily put their signatures to the demand sent to the federal government for the issuance of the coveted blue book. It was apt that a provincial lawmaker belonging to the JUI-F, a party whose chief has in the past had some of his own global journeys cut short over visa issues, read out the resolution. There have been other incidents indicating that the parties most prominent in KP have been particularly upset with these travel restrictions. The spirit which gave birth to the rare joint resolution contrasted with the logic behind these restrictions and reflected just how eager everyone in the house is to get around.

The official blue passport allows entry to some 70 countries around the world without the formality of a visa. According to the rules, provincial ministers are entitled to the blue passport, but provincial lawmakers are not. However, there is a tradition in the country where the government — or a particular minister with clout — has lavished the privilege on selected individuals. There was a blue passport scandal during Shaukat Aziz’s time as prime minister when retired bureaucrats and former ministers were declared entitled to carry it. Then, last year, it emerged that some 2,000 such passports had been illegally issued during the last PPP government, the assertion being that some of them had actually been sold. That should have been enough reason to frame tough rules about who does and does not deserve the privilege, freeing the KP lawmakers to take up some local issues of the people instead.