The polluted past and present

The state of Pakistan can function neither under the present constitution, nor under any form of tradition-cum-convention. Tradition there is — to rob and plunder and make merry whilst in the nationally available power-seats. That was set fast in the early days, almost as soon as the flag was hoisted, when the refugee properties abandoned by the fleeing minorities were up for grabs and citizens of all hues and species successfully compiled falsified claims.

Convention was that power and pelf were the true aims of life in the newly-born country, born in bloodshed and violence, chaos of course being highly advantageous to the grabbing game. And so it has continued down the decades, in one form or another. Can any one of us point to one era in the sad history of Pakistan — half of it lost after a life of 24 years — when one can truly say there was a stable government that dispensed governance?

From birth, for 11 years, governments were made and unmade with happy abandon. It took the then politicians nine years to come up with a constitution which had a brief, unhappy life of two years before it was trashed by the first military adventurer in 1958.  He brought in his own constitution in 1962, which lived until the next general pushed him aside and set forth on an even more disastrous course.

Then came the first of the PPP governments and social democrat-cum-feudal playboy, the grand-daddy of what is today in place. The third constitution, in a life of 25 years, was promulgated in 1973. It was hit for a six in 1977 by the third military man to take up the tattered reins and in 1985 transformed into an unrecognisable document, polluted and poisoned by a man who imposed his own form of religion and religiosity. By far the most dictatorial of all the so-called military dictators, his influence remains not only all over the constitution but over the existence of this country and its citizens.

This PPP-Z government may shout at us each day from the shabby rooftops claiming that the 1973 Constitution has been restored. It has not and it never can be. For that, there must be a radical revolution in the national mindset combined with a revolution in the quality and competence of the men and women who are propelled, by whatever fashion, to parliament.

Let us take a look at the fate of the men and women who have ruled under the 1973 Constitution, followed by the Ziaul Haq constitution. The maker-promulgator ended up at the end of a rope, the great amender was blown to smithereens. The quasi-democrats of the 1990s were both shunted out, twice each, and one is now dead, killed by assassins, and the other does not know what to do with himself and has little chance of making a grand comeback.

The fourth military man, no dictator he, blundered along with an amended form of the Zia-amended constitution until he also met a somewhat inglorious exit from the national scene. His dreams of a return are but dreams.

This present non-government exists under a re-re-amended form of the Ziaul Haq constitution, purely gratis a most disgraceful deal cut and bound with the world powers which now control the fate of this country and its 180 million citizens. The man who lords it over the government is obsessed by immunity. The government is least interested in where the country is going. Yes, it is time for a fundamental change.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 23^rd, 2010.