ISLAMABAD, July 28: The police order promulgated in 2002 was intended to depoliticize police but the changes made in it last November have politicized the force more than ever, according to a study done by an NGO.

“No wonder we see no improvement in the law and order situation in spite of the 2002 reforms, increased funding and lip-service to protecting the people,” said Mr Mukhtar Ahmad Ali of the Centre for Peace and Development Initiative (CPDI) in a talk on police reforms at the Centre for Democratic Development here on Thursday.

Apart from the police continuing in its usual malpractices across the country, he said about 50,000 ‘proclaimed offenders’ were estimated to be “out and active” in the province of Punjab alone.

They were even available on hire to do dirty jobs for people, who wanted to settle personal scores, he said.

Whatever the original police order had done for freeing the force from political influence, separating watch and ward from investigation and for public oversight of the police, had been diluted, if not undone, by the amendments introduced in it nine months ago, Mr Ali said.

After the amendments, the power to transfer and post officers and to prepare their performance reports has returned to the chief executives of the provinces and the constitution of the Public Safety Commissions, meant to oversee police’s performance, had been so changed that legislators of the ruling party gain an upper hand in the commissions, he said.

Asked if the police could be reformed in a society where the powerful disregard the Constitution and the laws with impunity, Mr Ali said the question was “from where to begin?”.

Outside pressure and worsening law and order situation was making the ruling class to introduce reforms and the civil society should try to take advantage of it, he said.

However, a former interior secretary, Zafar Rathore, said he had no hope for genuine reforms because “police was the most visible form of the exercise of power by the state and so operates the way the rulers want it to operate”.

Only by giving up its control over the police and vesting its management in a neutral body can the executive reform the force, he said.

But participatory democracy could take roots only in Britain where the sovereign diffused its executive power legally. It was alien to this land, he said arguing that the subcontinent had been ruled by invaders for thousands of years. What Pakistanis were seeing today was the culture of power. “We are returning to our own culture of power. We don’t understand, however,” he said.