Pakistan’s anguish

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The curse of dengue refuses to go away. So does a chief minister who has piled woe upon woe for a stricken province.

Since the induction of the current dispensations at the centre and the provinces, attention has generally been focussed on the dismal performance of the NRO-propelled PPP government. The unprecedented corruption of its functionaries and the blatant and carte blanche bartering of Pakistan’s institutions and its national interests for peanuts has been the main target of media and writers’ attention. The one person who has managed to escape in spite of a spate of blunders to his exclusive credit is the chief minister of Punjab. That is, till the criminal mishandling of the anti-dengue preparations and its subsequent deadly onslaught that has so far claimed dozens of casualties with the toll rising by the day.

Actually, a voluminous dossier could be compiled on his below-par performance stretching to over three years. Perched on a self-proclaimed high moral ground, the claims of transparency and good governance have long since been washed away by instances of mismanagement and nepotism. The billions that were blown away funding the sasti roti scheme or erecting the non-sustainable ‘Daanish’ edifice inflicting a crushing blow to the fate of a vast network of schools throughout the province only crowned a string of ceaseless manifestations of jaundiced planning. But, that was bound to happen when the priority consideration is not the benefit that a certain project would accrue to the people of the province, but the manner this would be exploited in scoring political points by citing the number of the unveiled plaques at the hands of the chief minister. While nations pass through testing times on course to attaining any level of progress, the criminal manner in which the incidence of dengue has been mishandled in Punjab is well worth being taken to a court of law.

Elsewhere in the country, after hearing the depositions of various parties, the Supreme Court has reserved judgement on the Karachi violence case. However, the court has issued an interim order directing the Sindh Advocate General to submit investigation reports on a daily basis updating the court on cases registered for crimes committed commencing July 24 onwards and the progress made therein. The SC also directed the trial courts to conduct hearings on a day-to-day basis and dispose of the cases expeditiously.

In spite of the widely popular demand that Zulfiqar Mirza should be summoned regarding the grave allegations that he had levelled in his interactions with the media about the MQM and its leadership’s complicity in efforts to dismember Pakistan, the SC refused to oblige. That is bound to cast some doubts about the seriousness of the court in unearthing the real reasons behind the seething unrest in Karachi and the role played by various mafias and their masters. After all, for over three years, Zulfiqar Mirza was the home minister of the province and privy to the forces operating behind the scene in controlling and bolstering the killer gangs in the city and his deposition would have helped the SC enormously in its endeavours to scuttle the violence.

But, then, these are extra burdens the SC is being forced to carry because the parliament and its allied institutions have failed to take cognisance of the forces creating unrest in the country. The legislature, quite literally, has abdicated its prime responsibility to the whims and fancies of the one who sits on the hill in Islamabad and whose principal concern it is to not only keep his majority till the senate elections in March, but also add to it through gruesomely foul means erroneously called ‘politics of reconciliation’. In the process, the constitution is damned, legality and morality are consigned to the pit, Supreme Court injunctions are rubbished and the national interesta are randomly forsaken. And when its own people, ala Zulfiqar Mirza, come up with disturbing revelations about the crude machinations at play, they are effectively sidelined with the conniving support of those who stand exposed. All this is done in the name of ‘reconciliation’ which, even after three-and-a-half-years of misrule, has delivered nothing.

It is patently evident that these shenanigans have transgressed the domain of acceptability. The Chief Justice’s warning the other day that “everything would end if steps were taken to stop the courts from functioning” relates to the hidden hands and intentions behind non-observance of the SC’s injunctions in the past and the dominant mindset of the incumbent mafias to affront the calls for subservience to the rule of law. This has been evident ever since an independent SC started issuing edicts pertaining to various cases before it encompassing the NRO, the plundering of the state institutions, the mega corruption scams, the efforts to render the NAB inoperative, involvement of the senior state functionaries to cover up misdeeds of the political leaderships and appointment of the president’s cronies and those convicted but freed through presidential pardons to key positions within the administration. These are, indeed, humiliating manifestations of ‘democracy’ and its attendant policy of ‘reconciliation’. It is like walking through a bazaar where everything is up for sale at the tagged price, state sovereignty and security included.

Much has gone wrong. Much more is going wrong. This has to stop. The most appropriate forum to do so would be the parliament. In the event that it remains irrelevant as it has in the past, the buck passes to other state institutions that are bestowed with the constitutional responsibility of doing so. Babar Awan’s meaningless polemics in the courtroom would not prevent this from happening.

The writer is a political analyst and a member of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf. He can be reached at [email protected]