Time to redo our ideals, seriously
Having selected an almost impossible title for this article I spent the weekend researching and still don’t know where to start or end. Anyway, I decided to make it simple. Now that the country has just celebrated its 65th birthday, I find myself in a mental quagmire. Do I celebrate and must my article just absorb the good and sweep the bad under the carpet, a national pastime, or shall I dig deep? A compromise then; let me celebrate the good, query the not so good and attempt to urge the decision-makers back to the drawing board. Stupid idealist that I am!
Simply put, the creation of Pakistan is a mammoth historical achievement. At the time it was “a cyclonic revolution” with no parallel in history.We have much to celebrate. We are a free people, with our own Land. That is more than many can say. Pakistan has unlimited and unique natural endowments; we have everything. We even, finally, have a democratically elected government in its fifth year of office.
To quickly go back to the origins. The Quaid emphasized, “I shall always be guided by the principles of justice and fair play without any, as is put in the political language, prejudice or ill-will, in other words, partiality or favoritism.” He added, “If you will work in co-operation, forgetting the past, burying the hatchet, you are bound to succeed. If you change your past and work together in a spirit that everyone of you, no matter to what community he belongs, no matter what relations he had with you in the past, no matter what is his color, caste or creed, is first, second and last a citizen of this State with equal rights, privileges, and obligations, there will be no end to the progress you will make.”
Somewhere early on, the mind closed out these guiding principles. Other, more self-serving and convoluted principles took over. The focus on progress dispersed. Pakistan began to fight itself. The people forgot the people. Excuses prevailed. The nation stood divided, then broke. Governments searched for a binding force.External threat and Indian hegemony became that force. Governments hid incompetency behind Kashmir. The people rallied behind the army. Military supremacy became the national clarion call. Democratic norms fell by the wayside. Military takeovers were hailed by the people and ‘legalized’ by the courts. The zenith became ‘nuclear power’. The biggest losers became the people and growth.
When I say back to the drawing board I seriously urge a rethinking of the ideals we believe in. First, we need to come to terms with reality. Who and what are we? What are our assets and natural endowments? How do we seriously develop them? How do we impact the literacy rate and how do we inculcate discipline and order? We need to define national priorities and establish a growth strategy, not ad-hoc to serve the government of the day. We need to consider only merit in HR deployment. We must not be dismissive of real gains but applaud them regardless of the regime or origins.
We need to focus economic realities and sell them to people honestly. Make them believe in the sacrifice demanded by being role models. Pakistan continues to live beyond its means, meeting deficit by printing notes and borrowing from banks. Our tax-to-GDP ratio is poorly. And yet revenue collection, although rising, remains at the mercy of lawmakers reluctant to enforce the law. To save the economy it is essential to action serious steps, not whitewashing, such as sectoral analysis and the establishment of a Serious Fraud Office urgently. To bolster it, innovation must prevail.
The basic essentials have historically played second fiddle to political expediency whatever the type of dispensation at the helm. An imperfect balance in the role of institutions has contributed largely to the state of the nation. Today, the judiciary, in the garb of freedom and activism, has stopped the normal functions of government. The Parliament and executive are under fire, despite the Quaid terming it “sovereign legislative body”. The country is at a standstill. The executive’s time is consumed by the court and vice versa. To draw an analogy, ridiculous as it may seem, it started with stay orders granted by courts against buildings leading to hundreds of unfinished buildings giving a terrible impression of the country. Today, the country is beginning to take on that appearance.
Government’s last option, if it cannot resolve issues with the court, is to take them to the court of the people; that is if it can create a case that its lack of delivery is linked to the situation obtaining. How it does that is its own decision. Today it is reactive. The court is faster on the draw. The people are suffering. Governance must take priority; the government must be able to freely exercise executive powers prescribed in the constitution without let or hindrance. Not just this one, it applies to any executive. The institutions need to accept the constitutional roles and boundaries without a constant battle for misguided supremacy.
Mr Jinnah said, “The prosperity and advancement of a nation lies in its intelligentsia”. Today, genuine intellectuals have stopped sharing. Perhaps they know too much and lack confidence in our powers to compute. Or perhaps they don’t know enough and are fazed. The deaf ear syndrome is predominant. Much needed is a real review of the goals and ideals of sixty-five years ago and building the highway that takes Pakistan on the road to stable prosperity. Happy Birthday, Pakistan.
