What can be done?

Civil and military services have miserably failed to provide Pakistan with a truly democratic state.

(This is the last of a series of eight articles on the role of the military in Pakistan)

As Percy Bysshe Shelley, the self-proclaimed legislator of the world observed: “The world is weary of the past, /Oh, might it die or rest at last!”

The Combine (civil and military services) and its ward, the political elite, have the obligation to rescue the country and themselves from the steep downhill slope of a tottering governance.

The saga of the exercise of sovereignty by the Combine since 1947, clearly leads one to conclude that the Combine miserably failed to provide Pakistan with a truly democratic state.

The civil executive dissolved the sovereign constituent assembly in 1954, abrogated the 1956 constitution and appointed and dismissed eight prime ministers in a span of six years. It was so naïve in understanding the nature of sovereign power that on one occasion the cabinet was guided into writing a letter to London to determine the scale of crockery and cutlery at 10 Downing Street so that it could decide what Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan should be provided with.

The military exercised undiluted sovereign authority for 33 years and, in its desperate quest for legitimacy, shared it for 14 years with nominated and pliant politicos, confirming the observation of the great historian Edward Gibbon that “the principles of a free constitution are irrevocably lost, when the legislative power is nominated by the executive”.

No longer available to the Combine is the option of yet another unconstitutional intervention with or without the help of politicos, unless it wants to invite a general uprising. Not withstanding any contrary advice of the US, the Combine cannot afford any repetition of its fatal past mistakes.

So, what can be done? Two vital tasks stare Pakistan in the face. The first: the direly needed protection of life, property and dignity of citizens, known in the imperial parlance as the restoration of law and order. The second: What should be the form of a new social contract between the people and the state?

The authority under the prevailing law to enforce law and order, stamp out ghunda-gardi and check corrupt practices does not rest with MPAs, MNAs, ministers, chief ministers, governors, the prime minister or the president. It rests solely with the district officers and under the oversight of the judiciary. To put the country back on the rails of good governance, authority must be handed back where it belongs under the law. Members of the provincial assemblies and parliament should confine themselves to legislate and be barred from trying to run districts.

As a purely temporary measure, the government should appoint senior, serving and retired civil service officers who pledge to enforce the law without fear or favour, and put them in charge of the districts with the powers of the district magistrate and collector and such powers as they had under the repealed Defence of Pakistan Rules (except the powers to curtail basic freedoms of the media and of detention of citizens without trial). The discretionary powers of the ministers to relax rules and regulations should be held in abeyance. The task of bringing peace and tranquillity to a very large number of districts should take a maximum of three years. The other districts, where political factors are involved, will require the settlement of political demands for self-rule and autonomy.

At the same time, we must not forget that under the British, rule of the district officers, helped by the military after the end of World War I, was largely responsible for the demise of the British Raj. Pakistan has to find a new sovereign to maintain peace and order in districts and their precincts, tehsils, towns and cities.

In developed western democracies, locally elected bodies are responsible for exercising the sovereign power necessary to maintain peace. The police works under local elected bodies and members of the public assist the court as jury. Why can’t Pakistan take the same route?

Published in The Express Tribune, December 22^nd, 2010.