A FEATURE common to all regimes in Pakistan — political or military — has been that the people for whom the writing on the wall is intended are the only ones unable to read it. Never was it more true, both of men and institutions, than it is now in the current transition.
The writing on the wall that only Pir Pagara and Altaf Hussain (not a spiritual Pir but no less to his followers) were able to read is, respectively, dreadful confusion throughout the country and bloody strife in Karachi. Not heeding the warning are Asif Zardari and Nawaz Sharif who are merrily sharing power and platitudes to fulfil the pledge made in the Charter of Democracy to pull the country back from the “brink of total disaster” with the help, of all people, of Maulana Fazlur Rehman.
And then they would go on to put the country on a course that would make it “economically sustainable, socially progressive, politically democratic and pluralist, federally cooperative, ideologically tolerant, internationally respectable and regionally peaceful” and what else have you. Escape from harsh reality is thus being sought in idle rhetoric, which the London Charter provides in ample measure.
Quoted above is just a short extract. Here is one quick example where the signatories to the Charter are already seen failing in their commitment. They promised to hold local government elections “within three months of the holding of general elections”. As it happens it might take them longer than that to put together the central and provincial governments.
In contrast to the solemnity of the Charter the reality on the ground, as seen by the tabloid press, is the return of revelry marked by song, dance and booze as the lawmakers (said to be the best paid and most pampered in the region) descend on the sedate, and now also sad, capital.
In the selection of men and women — the prime minister, the speaker, chief ministers and ministers — who are to implement the Charter the guiding principle apparently remains, as it has always been, kinship or cronyism. Punjab is lucky that its designated chief minister Shahbaz Sharif, though falling in the same definition, is a hard working, and for others harder driving, administrator. The other chief ministers placed in a more difficult political environment will be constantly looking up to their party bosses.
Countering insurgency in Balochistan and terrorism in the NWFP have been, and as far as one can see will remain, a primary responsibility of the federation. Governing Sindh may pose insurmountable challenges when the MQM is in hostile opposition and its leader is predicting bloodshed while the PPP’s ally, the PML-N, is all but wiped out in the province.
In the first PPP government (1988-90) neither coalition with the MQM nor confrontation with it made the province easily governable, such was the clash of interests and lack of trust between the two then and so it is now.
It can be even worse this time round because the district governments in Karachi, Hyderabad and in some smaller cities are dominated by the MQM. It is in the urban areas that the money and patronage lies. All politics, as is the axiom, is local and about jobs. Asif Zardari therefore needs to extend his conciliatory zeal to bring the MQM into the provincial government in a spirit of genuine cooperation rather than the mutual deception that marked their coalition of 1988. A particularly praiseworthy feature of the Charter is a promise to revive the old parliamentary tradition under which the leaders of the opposition in the national and provincial assemblies chaired the public accounts committees. Going further, the auditor general should be made answerable to this committee and not to the government.
A regrettable, perhaps deliberate, omission in the Charter is a guarantee to civil servants that their terms and tenures
will be protected against whimsical or vindictive actions. In the last decade’s alternating rule of the parties to the Charter, officials were treated like the servants of the party rather than of the public.
It has been said before and bears repetition that in the Nawaz Sharif government this writer, then a senior secretary, was made OSD after just three months in one ministry and then another three months before retirement. Mian Sahib then considered it was impertinent of a secretary to ask “pray why?” Hopefully he doesn’t this time round.
The rules of business and conduct which are binding on ministers and officials alike were not followed then nor in the Musharraf era and nor, surely, will they be in the upcoming government. Therein lies the root of maladministration, especially in the provinces. The people who must but refuse to see the writing on the wall are all too willing and eager (to employ a similar phrase) to cross the line in the sand, that is go beyond the point that they must not. Doing it at the moment, surprisingly, are not the ministers, legislators and officials but the judges and the lawyers.
Pervez Musharraf indeed acted arbitrarily, and to many unjustly, in retiring the judges. His action whether illegal or unjust or both can now be undone only by the legislators. By boycotting the courts and blocking roads, the lawyers only add to the misery of the litigants and the people at large. After all a million cases, some for a full generation, are awaiting adjudication.
The new government, howsoever exhilarated or confident, has a very short time in which to show the people that it can provide the security of life and employment which the previous government couldn’t. Prices of foodstuff will nevertheless keep rising and the shortage of electricity and gas keep worsening for some years to come.
If the lawyers continue to distract the government and the legislators in turn keep fighting for profitable posts, for cars, escorts, larger allowances and strut around with cronies and hatchet men in train, only the elite and the bootleggers will prosper.
Then it could be months, not even a year, before the people hark back to the good old Musharraf days.
courtesy: daily dawn, 23/3/2008
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