ARE FOUR PILLARS OF STATE RESPONSIBLE FOR WHAT AILS PAKISTAN TODAY?

Is the state itself responsible for this incredible slide to utter pandemonium?

Have the Pakistani state’s pillars faltered; is there a problem in enacting laws, enforcing them and mitigating the disputes regarding their meaning and application or does the onus of the state’s disintegration falls upon the free media, that vital fourth pillar of the modern nation-state.

Or is the problem more deep-set than that? If one analyses the situation impartially, the realisation dawns that no single institution of the state, taken in isolation, is responsible for the bedlam that characterises Pakistan’s national scene today. Rather, each one of the state’s institutions has failed in its own orbit, unable to perform the role enshrined to it by the Constitution.  There has been a holistic failure of governance in Pakistan and for that, every institution of the state holds responsibility.

Problems of Pakistan today are of a variegated nature. From the issue of terrorism to the ominous energy shortfall, woes abound. On the other hand, the lackluster performance of the state’s institutions remains heart-wrenching, compounding the citizens’ problems.

Let us dwell over the issue of terrorism to drive home the point.

It will be reasonable to suggest that all of the state’s institutions have been found to be in a state of stupor, when it comes to tackling this issue.

The legislature has failed to produce a comprehensive ‘National Security policy’, something along the lines of the one in place in the United Kingdom

Without an effective counter-terrorism policy to go by, the approach of the security institutions remains desultory. Rather than an all-round effort on the part of the elected representatives to frame the popular perception in favour of the efforts of the security forces in various parts of the country hit by the spate of terrorism, there is utter and complete bewilderment in the legislative annals of the country on how to rid Pakistan of the menace. The result is that one is not able to come up even with a definition as to what constitutes terrorism in Pakistan today, since the issue is constantly clouded by rhetoric of ‘nationalism’, ‘ethnic parochialism’, ‘reaction to imperialist policies’ and what not by the country’s legislators. Consequently, Hamlets are in preponderance while a David remains elusive in the legislative circles.

Moving on to the role of judiciary in the matter, much has already been said and written about the numerous loopholes in our judicial system which allow for committed militants evading the clutches of the law. There have been several documented cases where a self-confessed militant has been set free by the higher courts, while evidence against the accused has been declared to be found ‘wanting’. Too often, these liberated felons have struck again, killing people with sheer impunity. The judiciary, it seems, is bent on seeing the issue in its own choicest lens, while the room for debate remains flimsy and the implications grave.

The role of the executive arm is no less dismal. Often a time those who have been tasked with the responsibility to apprehend a freely-roaming terrorist, fail miserably in their duty to do so. Political entrenchment of these criminals in the security apparatus itself prevents their incarceration and presents a dilemma. At the same time, the police personnel have been found to be both ill-resourced and inadequately trained to lead the vanguard of the state’s battle against home-grown terrorism. Nepotism and corruption has had its fair share in the malaise of incapacity, coupled with basic absence of initiative on the part of officials. The result?

Many a sensitive installations have been raided time and again and multiple assaults staged by those hardcore militant elements who could have been nabbed much earlier, had the process of doing so been efficient and had it been headed by a proactive policing arm, appropriately trained and fully equipped to mete out the duties assigned to it.

Similarly, the role of the media, too, bags no laurels. It has failed to present a unified and consistent stance on the issue. The so-called ‘intellectual’ debates on television channels in political talk shows have presented a confused picture to the viewers on questions as rudimentary as to what constitutes terrorism and how to go about tackling it.  Consequently, the nation’s consensus on the issue remains fractured since the people, exposed to a lot of the cacophony that goes on national television in prime hours, are rudderless and ill-informed on the real contours of the problem.

Thus, by analyzing just one of the many macro problems that afflict Pakistan today, one can see how individual pillars of the state are collectively responsible for its glaring dissolution.

If the same analysis is repeated for the energy crisis or the increasing fiscal deficit or worsening environmental degradation, the consequent conclusions will not be strikingly different from the ones above.

What remains the panacea then?

The problems call for both general as well as specific solutions.

Aristotle, that acute observer of political meanderings of fellow beings, wrote in his work of the ‘Politics’ that a ‘State cannot be more than its citizens.’ The meaning to be gleaned from this is clear’ there is something lacking in each one of the citizens of Pakistan which has led to the unraveling of the state apparatus so vividly in the past two decades. And the culpability lies on the people’s acquiescence in all that has facilitated the fall of the state on its own head.  The Pakistanis, themselves, have become immune to terrorist strikes, Kalashnikov-slinging marauders, inefficiently-run state enterprises, indefinite and prolonged power shortages and brazen corruption in state institutions.

There is an air of apathy which engulfs each and every one of us and that has resulted in a living dystopia for all.

The above is the general prescription of the problems which face us today, in the implementation of which all of us have an instrumental and indispensable part to play. Civil society is a check on the state’s institutional workings and if it fails to perform the role allotted to it, democracy loses its splendour and the state either takes on a totalitarian garb or fails to function at all.

The specific solutions relate to the working of the state machinery itself.

Lack of coordination is one seminal cause of the ineffectiveness of the state structure to tackle issues head-on.  The executive, legislature, judiciary as well as the media should evolve mechanisms which facilitate an exchange of policy measures and prospective solutions amongst themselves. All of the state’s institutions need to be on the same page when it comes to such important issues as addressing the situation in insurgency-hit Balochistan or tabling a new proposal to the IMF.

This healthy exchange of ideas and practical measures should in no way taken to be as discouraging diversity in opinion, since all of the separate institutions will have different takes on the matters. But, glitches and disinformation can be prevented and must be, by involving all and sundry in developing a consensus on issues.

Moving on, a failure to come up with comprehensive and practical initiatives which gradually mitigate the problems is the result of a disparate orientation of the state’s institutions. Here, the legislative arm of the state needs to do the most in coming up with tersely-worded and compact legislation clauses, which do not leave any room for confusion in the minds of the higher judiciary which interprets the law and the personnel of the law-enforcement agencies who execute it. ‘The internal effects of a mutable policy poison blessings of liberty itself,’ claimed James Madison and thus, no loopholes must be left unaccounted for in drawing up of legislation.