Not the solution
One can understand the apex court’s frustration with the lack of cooperation by the security agencies and the FC in Balochistan. One can also understand that the chief minister and home minister failed to appear before the court and two out of three federal secretaries summoned appeared only a day after they were supposed to. What one fails to understand however is the warning that imposition of emergency could be one of the options to restore sanity to the province. Presumably what the Supreme Court has in mind is a state of emergency only in Balochistan. However, as some of the eminent legal experts have pointed out, the court has no power to impose an emergency which can be declared only by the president at the advice of the prime minister.
Again, can an emergency improve the situation in Balochistan? As the court observed on Wednesday, there have been allegations that the ISI, MI and FC pick people up and dump their bullet-riddled bodies while the police watches helplessly as assassins eliminate religious scholars and common people. What the state of emergency will do is only to hand over the functions of the government of Balochistan to the president or the provincial governor. But if the federal government finds it difficult to rein in those allegedly behind the disappearances and killings, how will the president or the governor succeed in doing the needful?
The present government has cooperated more with the Supreme Court than any preceding government, civil or military. It can be accused of delays in implementing the orders but has in most cases finally carried them out. It is under constant pressure on the one hand from the apex court and on the other from those who really control the agencies and devise the policies which are being implemented by the agencies in Balochistan with tragic results. The government of course needs to do much more to confront and control the agencies. It simply won’t do to merely handing over the matter to a committee of ministers who are now fully focused on preparations for the next elections. The court, on the other hand, should encourage and support the required actions rather than talk about emergency.