It is about time that people avoided the blame game and worked towards the betterment of the whole country
KARACHI: Even though the coronavirus fatality rate in Pakistan seems lower than in developed countries, it doesn’t reinforce the fact that we should feel lucky and go complacent. We rather need to be extremely careful in case the virus suddenly spirals out of control.
All core institutions have been caught up in a fight against an invisible enemy that has shaken the very foundations of healthcare and economics as we speak. While this turmoil may continue for a while, there is another tough fight the state institutions have been faced with for years and years — the fight against corruption. Like a virus, corruption has plagued the very foundations of our institutions. As a result, the trust deficit has widened, and subjective accountability has taken a front seat, replacing objective and impartial accountability. The nefarious cycle goes on, and the trickle-down effect is borne by the general public in the form of a weak economy that leads to a myriad problems like deplorable healthcare and education, particularly in rural parts of the country. This then paves the way for domestic violence that goes unpunished.
Cutting a long story short, given the challenges the country is facing, institutional harmony and strategic planning is needed to ward off the unseen enemy. It is about time that people avoided the blame game and worked towards the betterment of the whole country.
Syed Tahreer Hussain Naqvi
Published in The Express Tribune, April 21st, 2020.
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