The enfeebled constitution can be resuscitated through diagnosis and injections of checks and balances within the judicial stipulations. But do the current self-proclaimed reformers have the will and the guts to do it?
ONCE again, and for the umpteenth time, we are poised to go courting the elusive democracy, despite all the humiliations we suffered at her hands in the past. The nature of masochism was best explained when I spoke to someone whom I considered an oppressed peasant.
I told him about the robberies and atrocities that Mr N and Ms B have inflicted upon the nation, and asked how would he vote in the next elections. To my utter surprise, he named one of his tormentors with an indulgent remark that all great people have “minor faults”, and that masters are there to be served and not to be accused. With these few words he had innocently revealed one of the major causes of the ‘democracy in reverse’ that we experience.
Looking at his circumstances, it is not difficult to see that he values his difficult but assured existence under the protection of his master, more than the dubious fruits of freedom. Kept in the darkness of ignorance for centuries, and deprived of the skills of fending for himself, he has been programmed to endure servility under the tyrant masters, in preference to losing it all.
No wonder, when a group of bonded labourers were freed by a court after twenty years of forced labour, they did not know where to go and how to feed their families. Some of them even walked back to their masters willing to be taken back.
The results of the recent District Government elections show that the return of the old leadership is no more a conjecture, but a strong possibility. What we are up against is not a gang of usurpers, but something more insidious and ubiquitous.
They are the demons of the despotic authority that ruled our history. They got us addicted to their sweet and sour ways of protection and oppression, known as Feudalism. They have lost their legal authority, but still cling to it spuriously, and still lurk in the dark corners of our collective subconscious.
They are enemies of individual’s freedom, protractors of oppression in religion and antithesis of Democracy. They make us prone, not only to accept unqualified authority, but also to impose it on others, whenever we can. The demons haunt us in all walks of life, including the autocratic attitudes of family patriarchs and heads of the business organizations. Their self-serving agendas particularly have played havoc with the institution, may it be in the field of politics, administration, armed forces or even judiciary.
The deadliest for the polity are personified as the so-called elected representatives who have turned the system into ‘demo(n)cracy’ for more than half-a-century. Those who bear arms and claim to rescue the nation so often, have proved to be the consequence of their own cause of previous interventions. They have been no less greedy and inept, as far as the past experience shows. All of them flourish in collaboration with their own ilk, with or without uniforms, and on the limitless tolerance of the ignorant masses, who have been taught to accept their misery as the will of God.
Only the light of knowledge could reduce the darkness in our minds and drive the demons out. It is, therefore, no coincidence that all those who were ever in power have made it sure that education is kept out of reach of the common man, and is allowed to deteriorate where it exists.
The attempt to exorcise or eliminate the demons in one sweep is, therefore, a patent folly. What has programmed the psyche of the majority for a thousand years cannot be wished away in a thousand days. It will, however, be worthwhile to use this opportunity to take measures that can lead to disabling the rulers from acquiring and flaunting illegal authority and enabling the people to thwart them from doing so. This may crucially provide a level playing field to the suppressed social and political forces to gradually disarm them over a period of time.
The District Government system, in all fairness, is the first step forward in this direction, for one simple reason that it brings the neck of the potential oppressor closer to the hands of the oppressed. The fact that it had to be launched in one year instead of ten, and is having serious teething problems, makes it all the more necessary to protect it from the political predators waiting in the wings. The incumbent reformer has established his credibility by planting this sapling, which is reason enough for giving him the opportunity of nurturing it till it is mature enough to survive on its own.
In the formative stages of a society, a stubborn decadent system often has to be removed by unorthodox means beyond the pale of idealism, before ideals could be established. This is one such occasion when an enfeebled constitution can be resuscitated through diagnosis and injections of checks and balances, within the judicial stipulations.
There are some agreed imperatives for the long-term progress and survival of Pakistan, which are missing in acts and deeds of the polity. Our politicians with selfish and short-term agendas, have never addressed them in the past and will never do so in the future. Guaranteeing them and providing the required balance and muscle to the constitution at this juncture is, therefore, of utmost importance. Only such operation can prove that this regime, unlike the previous takeovers, means business.
Amendments must be principled, thoroughly debated in public for consensus and be within the spirit of the current constitution. They may be small in number, achievable in scope and tailored to our own needs rather than copied from other models. A national brainstorming is needed amongst the intelligentsia to conceptualize ideas, which may be harvested by the experts to transform them into constitutional amendments and legislation.
Hereunder are some thoughts on the issue:
* Bad politics has degraded the human capital of the nation to an illiterate un-employable mass without skills, which is driven to crimes and desperate acts like murders and suicides as a result of extreme hopelessness. Much of the educated citizenry, which keeps up the pretence of patriotism, is engaged in purely selfish, ethnic and sectarian pursuits at the cost of national interest and is truly bereft of any sense of nationhood.
Research and development in the field of Science and Technology is almost non-existent with the result that we remain backward, exporting raw material cheaply and importing finished products at high prices. The situation justifies harsh and unprecedented affirmative sanctions in the constitution to stop any further deterioration, and to compensate for the past neglect.
The answer lies in making a mandatory provision in the Constitution to set aside a substantial income from revenue for minimum expenditure on human resource development for the next, say, 15 years, even if we have to eat the proverbial grass to pay for it. This could be in terms of a GNP percentage to be spent specifically on literacy, higher education and research, and promotion of team spirit through sports, national solidarity media and cultural construction.
* All the dark deeds of the Political Masters are inflicted upon the people through the senior Civil Servant who is forced to obey at the pain of degradation or dismissal. He cannot have the courage to say ‘no’ to an illegal or dishonest order of the prime minister and the ministers, unless he enjoys constitutional protections, balanced with just and necessary deterrents against misuse of authority. Only then can he prevent the abuse of state powers at the highest echelons down to the lowest level of the patwari, the thanedar and the District Officer who have been responsible for strengthening the usurping demons at the grass roots.
The same applies for the judiciary which can only function appropriately if freed from fear or favour of the executive. This is only possible if their selection and appointment is left to a strengthened Supreme Judicial Council which should also have the authority to order directly any state institution to come to its help when needed. * According to one expert opinion, the written constitution, whenever enforced, is supreme to Parliament which cannot change its spirit even with maximum majority. Secretaries to various ministries and the legislative bodies should be under oath to safeguard constitutional and legal provisions within the scope of their responsibilities. They should make sure that contravention, if any, at any level, is not executed. It should first be pointed out to the relevant executive authority and then referred to the appropriate superior court for adjudication.
* Time has proved how difficult it is to prove embezzlement of public funds after the event. Laws are needed to encourage and protect those officials who blow the whistle before the event. Right of access to information by the public and increased transparency at all levels must be enshrined in the constitution to enable any citizen to spot and prevent misappropriations through the law.
The armed forces budget should be put before parliament. Larger outlays beyond a limit should be subject to mandatory pre-audit by the auditor-general. Allotment of plots and state lands at concessionary rates, which is the currency of corruption, should be banned in the constitution, exempting only the land-less and shelter-less poor.
* Low turnout in elections is a major cause of the failure of democracy in Pakistan. It is obvious from the 25 per cent to 35 per cent voting pattern, that the masses have rejected democracy in the form that it is practised. Apart from media campaigns exhorting the voters to vote for their own benefit, balloting should be facilitated by increasing the number of polling stations, arranging mobile booths for far-off places and extending the period of voting to three days. Compulsory voting should be considered adapting to the experience of Australia and other countries that practise it.
* It is a self-defeating exercise to allow such political parties to participate in a democratic process that do not practise democracy within their own parties. Law should be amended to disqualify those who do not hold verifiable elections at different levels of their parties or indulge in such fanciful resolutions as electing a life-president.
We do not want to be humiliated once again by ending up with the same old ‘demo(n)cracy’, as we go for new elections after a three-year surgical operation. We expect a qualitative change and a reversal of attitudes in the polity, which can restrain the greedy rulers and empower the needy people. In such a paradigm shift hangs the fate of Pakistan. If this opportunity is lost again, people will not be wrong in concluding that the current reformers were another group of old demons with new faces.
The enfeebled constitution can be resuscitated through diagnosis and injections of checks and balances within the judicial stipulations. But do the current self-proclaimed reformers have the will and the guts to do it? 
