What needs to be done

Pakistan needs a social contract between state and the people, based on cooperation and participation of the masses.

Today, Pakistan is a country without a government. The common man is without protection. Every day of the week and every week of the year, in one part of the country or another, citizens are out on the streets protesting against high prices, unemployment, non-availability of essential supplies or loadshedding. The desperate and depressed poverty-stricken commit suicide in large numbers. Journalists protest against uncivil behaviour, lawyers protest against the attitude of judges who register protests against the behaviour of the lawyers. The executive pillar of the state brazenly defies the Supreme Court.

The frequency of attacks on the police and military, of blowing up of train tracks and electricity and gas transmission facilities, exploding IEDs and reports of corruption prove that the permanent junior partner of the military, the famed steel frame work of the civil services, has collapsed and elected legislatures, government ministers, chief ministers, prime minister, governors and president are nothing more than a crowd of sleepwalkers.

The government and its administration are too feeble, discredited and unpopular to face the onslaught of the masses. General loot and plunder in which the poor and the weak shall suffer the most is on the cards. The shadow of some kind of military intervention looms large over the land mass. The military’s option to intervene and take charge with a collapsed civil executive is nil. A proxy political setup on the lines adopted in the past shall worsen the plight of the polity and precipitate anarchy.

The polity of Pakistan faces a crisis of civilisation which has torn apart the basic human values of truth, justice, fair play, decency, tolerance, brotherhood, accommodation, collective effort and ethics and aesthetics.

Pakistan needs a social contract between the state and the people, based on the cooperation and participation of the masses to replace the collapsed executive setup which needs constant protection of the military. Fortunately, there is a way out without direct military intervention and without disturbing the existing parliament, provincial assemblies and ministers in any unconstitutional manner. The following major measures are suggested: 1)  Provinces should have the fullest provincial autonomy. 2) To root out corrupt practices and enforce the rule of law in letter and spirit, choose senior, serving and retired, civil service officers known for integrity who pledge to enforce the law without fear or favour and put them in charge of the districts as deputy commissioners with the powers of district magistrate and collector and such powers as they had under the repealed defence of Pakistan rules (except the powers to curtail the basic freedoms and to detain citizens without trial). The district police should be put under the deputy commissioner. The discretionary powers of the ministers to relax rules and regulations should be abolished. 3) Amendments in the Criminal Procedure Code, the Civil Procedure Code, the legislations establishing courts of law, the Police Act and other laws should be legislated to enable a set up of local bodies which will be, ultimately, fully responsible for the maintenance of peace and justice in their domain. Amendments in the system of justice should enable juries of citizens to give guilty or not-guilty verdicts, leaving the sentencing to judges on the lines of the laws in force in the developed democratic states. 4) The new deputy commissioners should be tasked with the preparation of new electoral rolls and holding elections of the local bodies. Anti-people elements should be barred from the electoral contest. The commissioners should also arrange training courses and internships for the elected persons to enable them to assume power under the new laws.

The power from the deputy commissioner to the councils and their populations should be completed in stages within a period of three to four years.

If Pakistan can find the required number of officers, it will become a state free of corruption where the rule of law and the writ of the courts prevails, where citizens are masters of their own destiny, where there is genuine democratic governance and where the military will neither feel the necessity of intervening in governance nor will it have the clout to do so.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 5^th, 2010.