AS the current political stand-off continues and crisis has seemingly become the new normal, there are a few — perhaps too few — individuals in the political spectrum looking past the present situation and suggesting fixes for the institutional dilemma that is civil-military relations.

Senators Raza Rabbani and Farhatullah Babar have in the course of the past week reminded everyone of the most obvious — but also perhaps one of the most surprising — of democratic deficits: no parliamentary oversight of national security, with a committee not even existing in name, as it does in the case of the defence committee, which nominally oversees the functioning of the military.

To be sure, the present crisis is as much about Imran Khan and Tahirul Qadri as it is about yet another PML-N government that once more has prickly relations with the army leadership.

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But electoral reforms — the core constitutional and democratic demand of at least Mr Khan — are perhaps more within the realm of the possible as compared to reform of the power structure of the state itself at this stage.

Consider how both senators have framed their comments on the need for a national security committee in parliament: rather than immediately go to the issue of civilian oversight of the military.

They have cautiously talked about the need for having a proper, institutionalised means of communication between the military and parliament.

Clearly, much of the careful language is meant to assuage military leadership concerns of being made subservient to a political class that perhaps many in the armed forces still consider ill-equipped and unsuited to making decisions on matters of national security.

But the PPP senators are right. Without a formal, regular channel of communication between the military and parliament, old suspicions and beliefs — on both sides — will never really change.

And without old suspicions and beliefs giving way to a more nuanced and sophisticated understanding of the other, neither the civilian nor the military side will truly be able to move the power structure of the state towards the constitutional ideal of civilian supremacy over the armed forces.

Unhappily, the PML-N government appears to be uninterested in the idea of structural reforms. Consider the one change that has been effected: revamping the Defence Committee of the Cabinet and renaming it the Cabinet Committee on National Security that was supposed to have its own secretariat and work with a full-time staff on policy matters.

Today, the CCNS stands almost forgotten.

Instead, it is the fate of retired Gen Pervez Musharraf that is talked about when it comes to debate on the future of ties between the PML-N and the army.

When personalities, and not institutions, dominate the agenda, crises become all that much more difficult to avoid or manage. But is the PML-N willing to listen?

Published in Dawn, September 19th, 2014