Ill Will, Nil Skill

Prime minister is not rising to the occasion because he can’t. That’s it. He doesn’t have the will, skill, to do so.

Well actually there’s a pretty good explanation for the mess we are in. No, it’s not the deep-rooted monster of corruption, or the structural flaws of the system, or even the much-maligned civil-military imbalance — no sirs, all of these are off-shoots of a core fundamental reason:

Leadership with ill will, and nil skill.

This country of ours has very serious, very deep-rooted problems. It cannot be governed on whim and fancy; it cannot be ruled on an adhoc basis; and it certainly cannot be administered by people who do not understand the lessons of history and the requirements of the future. To set Pakistan right, radical and transformational decisions need to be taken.

That ain’t happening with this lot. Sorry, it’s not. There has been a serious — in fact, critical — lack of capacity displayed by this crop of leaders in the last few months. If there was ever any doubt that this lot — one and all — could do what it takes, this doubt is now buried under six feet of clay. No, this is not a sweeping statement; it is a bitter reality that drips out of empty petrol nozzles with an agonising hiss.

As we limp our way through the debris of our dreams, a certain clear theme wafts up like an unpleasant odour: this way of doing things with this kind of leadership will just not work. How long can we continue to live in hope that given time, these people will change, this system will reform, and the fundamental flaws within our polity will get ironed out? How long will we passively wait for this whole rotten mess to clean itself up? Decades? Centuries? What scale are we talking of here? And is hope a plan of action?

Famed strategist Moeed Yusuf argued recently in Dawn that this rotten system had reached its zenith and could deliver no more than what it has. In essence, he argued that what we have right now is the maximum capacity that this system with this leadership can deliver. The brilliance of his argument lies in slicing through the misplaced sensitivities of people who can only think in terms of democracy vs martial law, and delving deeper to examine the roots of our failure. Columnist and public policy expert Mosharraf Zaidi responded in The News by listing out the obvious challenges facing the democratic leadership, and asked why the prime minister was not rising to the occasion.

Well, Mr Zaidi, here’s the simple answer: he is not rising to the occasion because he can’t. That’s it. It’s not that he does not want to, or does not dream to; it’s that he doesn’t have the will, and the skill, to do so. The challenge is too big for him. The moment is too big for him. That’s just the way things are. Lionel Messi is arguably the world’s best footballer, but he can’t be good at medicine; Inzamam has matchless skills as a batsman, but he will not do so well as a nuclear scientist, I suspect. Ditto for PM Sharif. He has reached his zenith. He has done wonderfully well for himself, and is clearly a success story in many ways. But there comes a time when a person runs out of steam; when he exhausts all his energy and his God-given talents and begins to sputter like a car with a busted carburetor. That’s the time when the person realises that he reached for the stars, and got his fingers as high as his cupboard.

Our civilian Sharif had his Churchillian moment on December 16, 2014. He blew it. This self-detonation happened not because Sharif missed the opportunity to grasp it, but because he would have still blown it if it had hit him in the face. He just does not get it. It is beyond him to recognise the urgency of transformational decision-making. It is, in fact, beyond him to even understand the nature of the broad sweep of critical and game-changing reforms that are required to carve a glimmering future for Pakistan.

But why blame him alone? It’s the whole lot. The PPP is a lost cause, religious parties are a write-off, regional parties don’t count at the strategic level, and the PTI cannot break out of its own straitjacket when it comes to the existential threat of terrorism. The leadership, it seems, is in the hands of a bunch of dead-enders — all hostage to their own limitations, ill will, and an acute lack of skill.

Ah, the parliamentary fundamentalists say, you are advocating martial law! You are an anti-democrat calling for the return of generals! Have you not learnt anything from the blunders of dictators? You would harken us back to the dark days of autocracy and one-man army rule!

Wrong. Such knee-jerk reactions reflect on the bankruptcy of thought that dominates a one-track discourse: democracy vs dictatorship. Such a discourse blindly misses the point: Can a system — and those who run it — reform itself into oblivion? Pakistan is begging for first generation reforms: education emergency, fixing the police, cleansing the justice system, reforming public sector enterprises and enforcing the rule of law across the land, across the board. To do this two elements are necessary: first, a leader who recognises and internalises the absolute urgency of such reforms, and who can rise above all political, provincial and parochial interests to ruthlessly go after such a reform process; and second, a team that has the will and the skill to execute these reforms.

So it’s not actually a democracy vs dictatorship debate at all; it’s how we reform this parliamentary system inherited by the British, so that the best and the brightest among us can occupy public offices without being held hostage by petty political, provincial and parochial interests.

The debate now is clear: remaining within the democratic umbrella, how do we sweep away leaders with ill will, nil skill and usher in those with strong will, full skill.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 18^th, 2015.

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