State of the state

The state today is the master of all it surveys. That should concern it.

It has been a very long time since so much power was concentrated in so few hands. Such power is defined not just by the ability of the powerbrokers to bend others to their will, but also to the level of resistance to such power. In times of unalloyed dictatorships, the concentration of power through extra-constitutional levers may have been more, but so was the resistance from those at the wrong end of the stick.

Not so today.

With all other branches of the state weakened at the expense of the executive, and with the political opposition quasi-emasculated, there is nothing that the state seems to fear. Its control is total. Its will has hardened. It will bend those who must bend, and those who do not, it will break.

When the state reaches such a state, it runs risks. One such risk is not knowing when to lay down the stick and pick up the carrot. This is a classic by-product of the dilution of the system's checks and balances. In today's situation, nothing illustrates this more vividly than the state's approach towards the opposition.

The opposition is in a mess. Even the opposition acknowledges this. Ever since the PTI lost its government in Khyber-Pukhthunkhwa, it has been flailing around trying to figure out what to do and whom to blame. The PTI's leadership is, on a daily basis, mocked by the PTI's leadership. And by its massive support base. Even the staunchest supporters of the party take solace in the argument that the party leadership matters not. The party, they say with sound logic, is just one man. That man remains as popular as ever, despite the party leadership's embarrassing failures to hold itself together.

If the PTI is in a shambles, the TTAP is not helping it either. In fact, probably on the contrary. Holding the two most prestigious offices that the opposition holds, the TTAP leadership has a leading role in terms of the opposition's political strategy. Yet, the leader of the opposition in the National Assembly is himself being seen as part of the problem by many within the PTI ranks. He remains offensive in his approach towards negotiations with the government even though many within the PTI believe that their leader in Adiala appointed him for his experience in guiding the opposition through tricky political situations. Well, today is as tricky as tricky gets.

The opposition finds itself out of power, out of ideas, and frankly, out of options. Which is the exact spot where the state should engage it. But the fear is that – in its hubris – the state will miss the opportunity.

It will miss it because the political input coming from the government for the state is, at best, recommendatory in nature. There is little pushback if the state is resistant to this input. The power imbalance, and the dilution of checks and balances, has skewed the system's dynamics in such a way that juggernaut of the state feeds more on its sheer momentum than on the logic of a given situation. With the two political parties within the ruling setup concerned more with the protection and promotion of their provincial domains, the Centre just does not seem to carry the political heft needed to inject its input into the state's fuel tank. They all prefer to just go with the flow.

That flow is ensuring that once the state has the opposition's back to the wall – as it does now – it prefers to break the back and the wall instead of bringing it back into the fold. The PTI is vulnerable. It is looking for a way out of this corner. It needs political oxygen. This is the time for the state to engage it and find space for it under the huge tent. That's what good politics demands. That's what good statecraft demands.

But don't hold your breath.

Not for this, and not for other developments that need more carrots and less sticks. The hubris, the momentum, the uber-confidence, the lack of pushback, the geo-strategic grandstanding, all of these are propelling the state into a state where its ability to weigh the costs and benefits of its actions dispassionately is weakening. The hammer-and-nail approach to dealing with human rights activists, journalists, opposition members and any one else who may not be ready and willing to say "yes sir, yes sir, three bags full" can be a recipe for consequential problems further down.

There are major reforms on the way. The 28th Amendment may still be under wraps, but it is a work in progress. One hears of many other sweeping changes to the governance architecture being considered. The power wielders say such mega changes require the state to cross all hurdles that are usually placed in the way of reforms that undercut vested interests. The ability to remove these hurdles, and to prevail over any resistance is, these people say, the true measure of the state's resolve to do the right thing.

While there may be merit in many of these reforms – smaller administrative units, empowered local governments – the fact is that done wrong, these reforms can create more problems than solve them. Doing them right means taking everyone along as much as possible. It means not rushing through decisions without painstaking consultations and deliberations and discussions. It also means creating an environment that is conducive to such deliberations and discussions. In fact, it also means realising that carrots are often much more useful than sticks.

It is precisely when the state is at its strongest that it must reach out to those that do not agree with its policies. We may be divided into political, social and institutional groupings, but we all unite under one flag. That's the north star that should guide those who wield the most power in today's Pakistan.