The problem with the performance indicators of law enforcement agencies is that you can only be certain of their failures. In another parallel universe, for instance, the federal parliament has been attacked, in what would have been the single, most grave terrorist attack in the country’s history, symbolically speaking.
Interior Minister Rehman Malik said that the attack was to take place on the day of the joint session of parliament and the handler of the attack cell, it has been disclosed, was a government official belonging to the finance division.
Though not many take our security czar’s word as gospel, there is reason to believe the claim. Militants had been warning since some time now that, were the parliament to pass the resolution that would reverse the government decision on the Nato supply routes, they would take to targeting legislators. What better venue than the house itself?
Perhaps Pakistan’s great unsung heroes are those from within the political class. It is the much-maligned politician who has been on the receiving end of the worst kind of state repression in the history of the country. Yet, they are at it. It has been a slow battle of attrition between the democratic and anti-democratic forces in the Republic, which has now culminated at a point where publicly yearning for military rule is impossible, even by political parties that are the darlings of the deep state.
The caustic reaction of many, especially those within the non-voting, urban, middle-classes, towards politicians in general reveals the underlying yearning for authoritarian governance in their minds. In democratic dispensations, where the dividends of democracy and, yes, patronage are spread out into the rest of the country, this class feels unattended. In authoritarian regimes, on the other hand, a handful of urban centres are patronised; the junta feels no need, really, to engage the peripheries.
In this day and age, the state should ensure the safety of practitioners of the art of the possible. This should not be interpreted as lax security for the rest of the country; just a reminder that the electorate in general has a better shot at realising its hopes and aspirations in the physical safety of the politicians who try to woo it.
