Playing extension

While evaluating an English essay of a Civil Service aspirant, I came across an outline that identified “lack of resources” as one of the primary causes of poverty in Pakistan. I wondered if the aspirant didn’t read the relevant stuff containing the resources of the country. In response to his questions on where to learn about the resources our country is blessed with and why, despite abundance, most people struggle for survival, I suggested he read ‘Pakistan Studies’ to learn about the country’s resources and the ilk of Panama Papers and other such leaks to understand the public’s lasting woes. Extensions considerably add to these public woes and the powerful’s treasure.

Throughout the country’s unsettled history, the succeeding governments sustained their stakes through their consistent pursuit under inconsistence policies. Instead of being driven by the demand and dynamics of the times and the imperatives of public wellbeing, the volatility of the policies was and is being determined by changes in guards and the interests of their architects. How have consistent interests survived the planned change in guard? The practice of playing extensions among establishment, civilian authorities, bureaucratic and the judicial elite has played a considerable role in the sustainability of their vested interests.

The practice of giving extensions to public servants wreaks havoc on the public by extending the ill-earned interests of the beneficiaries. It defies the standard of merit and rule of law and usurps the rights of the rightful waiting in the wings. Also, extensions of people after their superannuation block the entry of youth equipped with dynamic skills and selflessness into the system. All the facilitators and beneficiaries of the extensions serve as support for and extensions of the parasitic status quo. Had they been that talented and skilled in their respective areas, the country couldn’t have been on the cusp of collapse.

The hordes of extended and reinstated retired pub servants keep the country from moving ahead by not only systematically resisting structural and normative reforms but also influencing the recruitment required for institutional efficiency and good governance. Since today’s challenges demand dynamic manpower recruitment in the spirit of meritocracy, resisting the same in any form is acrimonious to the people. Moreover, the consistency of the interests contained in the inconsistent policies and the subsequent extensions of tenure demand changes in the legal framework. For that purpose, the laws are selfishly amended and mutilated with the collusion of a questionable parliament.

Though the self-extension of dictators isn’t something surprising in a country like ours, instances of parliamentary extension badly question their legitimacy. The parliament-driven extension of two military chiefs over the past one and a half decades suggests the former is one of the beneficiaries. Moreover, the ongoing speculations about extensions of two chiefs of two key institutions suggest that the chronic status quo is experienced only in putting the country down the road to decadence. Also, it suggests that the architects of the system, like over a quarter a century ago, barely intend to allow the country and people to prosper.

In other words, parliament and establishment prop up each other’s standing at the ultimate cost of the fate and future of the country and its citizens. Had the two not given each other illegitimate support, the country would have been on the road to prosperity.

Therefore, all brags of democracy, constitutionalism, institutional integrity and neutrality, and public wellbeing would continue to bring misery to the country unless the institutions and shareholders of the exploitative status quo were made to commit to the laws of the land. To this end, undoing the practice of extension in all its forms and bringing to the books its beneficiaries and facilitators would help lay the foundation of a better and more prosperous future for the country.