Smelling the political fumes rising from Pakistan, intuitively I feel that my country is being driven to its demise. The situation that has been created is that the people of Pakistan have been pitched against their own army, the only institution which they respected, no matter how sullenly at times.
The real tragedy is that this situation has so clearly arisen because the army has decided to come to the protection of those utterly devoted to sucking the last drop of the nation’s blood. If the people lose, they will lose their country because its fate will irrevocably have been set in stone by those set over them. In this case, which is most likely, the degeneration of the country will continue till it finds reprieve in death.
If the people win, this will only come about if they are willing to give their blood, fight, and dislodge the army from power.
The only possibility of avoiding these two outcomes lies in the army’s realization of the sheer enormity of its crime of bringing thugs to the helm. If the army then does and everything in its power to redeem itself, and thus repair the damage done, things can change. The very first step taken in this direction will have to be to ensure elections which are both free and fair.
But this is not likely to happen because a lot of money seems to have exchanged hands, and the ones that have made the payment, hold all the proofs. And therefore, it has now become a choice between saving “reputations” of those that have made the sellout, or saving the future of the people who have been sold.
Of course, the dice will fall in favour of the “reputations”. Hypocrisy always wins out in the end. And when the hypcrite says his five daily prayers as well, often hypocrisy is all the more deeply embedded in him.
Of all sellouts that “enrich” the history of the subcontinent, ours has been the most craven for its sheer brazenness.
It has been so open as to defy credulity.
And yet one has to hope because nations have been redeemed before. Sooner or later we too shall be. And we should know where to begin the turnabout when redemption comes.
When you read history, you may come to the conclusion, that no country or peoples has survived or progressed, without the rule of law.
This may come in the form of adherence to ruling tribal customs and traditions, or in the form of rule of law as we understand it.
In all events adherence to it is a form of self-discipline, without which no law can be effectively implemented.
This is so because no people can be totally policed. So, unless a greater majority of such people voluntarily subscribe to the regime of laws set over them, such laws are impossible to implement.
This self-discipline is the very basis of functional morality in a society, without which nothing can remain orderly.
And chaos, which destroys this order, begins with theft, and lies and lying form the protective cover for this theft.
The erosion of moral order begins with theft because acquisitiveness forms the first building block of power, which exercises the greatest pull on man.
Eventually the sheer volume and utter brazenness of this theft reaches such proportions, that it bulldozes all that is sacred in society, which helps keep it together.
This is what has happened to Pakistan.
Therefore, if we are ever to hope for a change of direction, survival, and progress, we need to begin by instituting the rule of law. And the first step in this direction has to be that we come to grips with wanton theft gnawing at our very innards. This cannot even begin to happen unless we deal with our thieves, bring them to justice, and get our assets back.
ALL other reforms come later. This HAS to be the starting point where rule of law begins.
It is not for nothing that corruption is seen as a cancer all over the world. And unless cancer is first excised the body cannot survive.
A few centuries ago, in the UK petty larceny was defined as theft of something the value of which was less than a shilling. The upper sentence of this was transportation for life. For major larceny i.e of theft of an article worth more than a shilling, the sentence was death.
Even with such prohibitive sentences, theft remained commonplace.
But it began going down when the certainty of punishment increased, even though its severity was reduced.
As the certainty of punishment becomes increasingly established, so too is the rule of law. Only when mental energies are freed from the compulsion to plan the next big theft, can such energies be gainfully deployed elsewhere. Only then can sane and fruitful policies be made and implemented. An unimplemented law or policy can only be so much waste of paper and ink.
Only then can one hope to see progress made.
We are too far down the drain to hope for reform in too many areas.
Not until the rule of law is implemented can one even hope for a turnaround, and for general reform.
And the direction the implementation of law should take is to bring thieves and thugs to the book. All the rest will follow in due course.
And among the vast canvass of theft, it would be best to dismantle the mafias first. And among these, the beginning should be made with the land mafia, which is the mother of many crimes, especially crimes committed by politicians.
It is not for nothing that all political and moral scientists and philosophers through history have decried the formation of oligarchy in society.
All of them foresaw and predicted that when the interests of the oligarch stand in opposition to those of the people or a nation, the oligarch will inevitably stand against the interests of the nation and undermine it to bolster his own.
This is what is happening to Pakistan today. The interests of the oligarchs are in unchallenged ascendant, and the nation has been brought quavering to its knees.
But where Pakistan stands today, with most institutions pulverized, the institution of the rule of law will be difficult to begin. It is people who are required to build and run institutions.
Because we have lost too many of our best officers, to make up for this loss our human capital will have to be mined from those made redundant i.e those who had a reputation for both ability and integrity will have to be recovered from retirement, deployed, and empowered.
This has always been done throughout history. Because most armies maintain records, instances of this resort to services of retired personnel being requisitioned for national service can most readily be recalled in the case of most of the world’s armies.
But first things first. Which way Pakistan goes will depend on the decision of our top few generals.
We need to fall in prayer, and hope that this one time our sellouts will break precedence, reverse course, and come to the relief of their country.