Sacred cows and the vision
Determined to restore the vision envisaged by the Quaid in the concept of Pakistan, Moeen Qureshi has called into question the quality of our leadership over the past four decades. He has taken steps to bring those who aspire to be the rulers of Pakistan within the ambit of the rule of Law. Civilized society expects its leaders to be subservient to the rules and regulations they are pledged to uphold, not to be above the law they enforce for others. In Pakistan today, the laws of the land are meant to govern only those who are without money and/or influence.
Some of the names of the privileged elite has been published in the loan defaulters list and some will definitely be “mentioned in dispatches” in the utilities and tax default scoresheet that we have been given to believe is to follow. While many are bracing themselves in anticipation of disclosure, in a perverse way it is a sort of a status symbol that denotes the person’s ability to not only take more out of the hopelessly over-burdened socio-economic infrastructure but also refuse to pay for the services acquired. In a manner of speaking, those who have not made it on one list or the other have failed to benefit from the “open season” on the national assets and can be classified as the great silent (and stupid) majority, serving only as extras in the grand act of the national drama.
In his address to the National Defence College, MQ spoke about his vision of Pakistan. Instead of specifics he was abstract and philosophical but given the star galaxy Armed Forces brass assembled, rhetoric was probably the political (and safe) thing to do. It is said that it is better to read between the lines, it tires the eyes less. He gave a very believable summary of his vision for Pakistan, MQ was only articulating the feelings of all those who hold the interests of the country dear and are horrified at its present drift.
One glaring omission in MQ’s scheme of things was the lack of mention of the triad of sacred cows that have combined to strike at the roots of our existence but possibly discretion got the better part of his valour, after all how many Goliaths can one David take on? He did not mention the imageries that exist in the law enforcement agencies (the first of the triad) who are expected to carry out the mandate to enforce the rule of law, neither did he indicate what he was going to do about it. In blunt language, our police services need to be closely monitored for corruption and those agencies that are meant to prevent and root out corruption in the police services should be less corrupt than those who they are expected to take action against. In fairness to them, barring a few salutary exceptions, the personnel of the law enforcement agencies have been corrupted by a combination of their service conditions, circumstances, opportunity and the requirement of the privileged elite comprising the bureaucracy politicians, the rich and influential to bend the law to their will, whim and fancy. Unless government tackles the problem of service conditions by giving good pay and allowances along with adequate medical, housing, transportation, education etc, the under-equipped under-paid police force is always subject to extraneous pressure meant to subvert their honesty and integrity. To reform the Police, drastic measures are necessary, necessarily this must start by cleansing the Officers Corps and having Oversight Committees to check wrongdoing. Citizens committees on the pattern of Citizen Police Liaison Committee (CPLC) must be encouraged and each Province/major city should have a Police Ombudsman attached to the CPLC to ensure that the rights of the police personnel and/or the citizens are not trampled upon. The police services should be autonomous besides under Provincial CPLCs who must have governing chapters in each District consisting 50% of prominent citizens who are apolitical while the rest should be nominees of the various political parties in the percentage of votes in that area, minimum requirement being at least 15% of the votes cast.
The second corner of the triad, the intelligence agencies also need an oversight mechanism desperately. They have done excellent work over the years particularly when they have not been influenced by vested or personal interest but in matters of domestic politics they have been their master’s voice, ready to do their bidding. They are prone to being manipulated by the rulers for their own ends and as such have become all-powerful (a State within a State) in the knowledge that they can wreck careers and destinies by giving an adverse report on any individual who does not conform to their whims or dictates. The extraordinary powers of the intelligence system are misused and manipulated for the personal benefit of certain unscrupulous persons. Since the individual cannot penetrate the veil of secrecy and has no access to their reports he cannot defend his integrity, falsehood soon becomes a fact, utter calumny becomes a part of history. No wonder intelligence reports are treated with skepticism so much so that even genuine reports about individuals becomes suspect. Serious intelligence reports from different agencies were read out about one particular individual in a particular Promotion Conference some years ago, these were brushed aside by the then COAS and the individual was promoted. The law of nature (and his own nature) contrived to get the particular officer a year or so later but since the intelligence summaries about the individual were adjudged to be false by the then COAS in overriding them, why was action not taken against the authors of the reports? Nepotism is magnified many times over in the intelligence services, they need to be controlled and harnessed otherwise they have the tendency to become monsters. Look at the career of the man who was responsible for over a 1,000 deaths (and tens of thousands injured) in the Ojheri Camp blast. In any civilized country he should have been cashiered, in Pakistan he was promoted and appointed to look after the most sensitive of departments within an intelligence agency. As became common knowledge all over Karachi, he and his hand-picked cronies established safe-houses and packed them with women and wine mostly for their own personal needs. Such is the credibility of our verification system that notwithstanding the colour on the forehead meant to proclaim his dedication to Islam, there is a rumour that at least one is a secret member of a minority community. Between the two of them they alienated one of the most die-hard and patriotic communities of this country, doing more damage to the foundations of the Federation than enemy subversives. Has anyone lynched them as yet? On the contrary, the system that nurtured such scam has closed around them protectively and they exist to cause more damage to the nation in future years.
We must have Oversight Committees headed by senior retired Armed Forces officers of known honesty and integrity for each intelligence service. Necessarily one cannot open up the working of the secret Agencies for the general public and as such these Committees should be attached to the HQs and the various regions, to go through each and every report submitted by them to check their veracity and their motivation as well as to cross-check them with other agencies. How can we allow those who commit crime to sit on judgement on themselves, has anybody ever heard of the word “cover up?” Similarly, acting as Ombudsman, these oversight committees should possess judicial powers to punish wrongdoing within the agencies. Of particular concern should be the motivated political initiatives when “dirty tricks” are employed to tar and feather political opponents of the rulers. The loyalty and antecedents of the heads of the services require special attention, a man capable of disloyalty to the incumbent head of his discipline in supersession to loyalty to a successor can sell his conscience to the highest bidder for advancement. Capability must be mixed with integrity to achieve excellence of service. The utmost quality should be loyalty to the country, the ability to express such views that may not be comfortable to the rulers but are in the greater interest of the nation.
The judiciary (the last of the triad) in Pakistan has always been respected but in the recent past, particularly in Sindh, it has fallen into severe disrepute. The higher judiciary still commands respect but the general public has no confidence in the lower echelons of judicial process. This is a serious flaw in our system because unless justice can be available to all, to be dispensed without fear or favour, it can be manipulated. Honest officers among the police services are frustrated to see criminals they put into the dock to walk off scot-free because of a patchy performance by our lower judiciary, after all why was the Army requesting powers in Sindh under Article 245?. Partly the problem stems from the fact that there is no separation between the judiciary and executive but mostly because the lack of good pay and service conditions mean that the best and brightest are exceptions in volunteering for induction rather than the rule. In a Catch-22 situation, corrupt police officers do not present criminal cases properly investigated to the courts and the judiciary thus finds itself helpless to apply the laws of the land. A concerted effort to bring in judicial reform must be initiated by the Caretaker PM if the vision he speaks about so eloquently has to become a reality. In this respect he must obtain the support of the higher judiciary which must set about cleansing the ranks of all those who are corrupt. It must be mentioned that if criminals function in the name of justice, then justice becomes a crime.
The police, intelligence services and the judiciary form a triad that sit boldly across the path of all permanent reforms of a corrupted system. These sacred cows that have managed to blur the vision of our country into an ugly semblance of itself. For the most part, the system works, unfortunately only certain key individuals are responsible for its deficiencies in the system. If these untouchables cannot be brought to heel by MQ, given the fact that he has the courage to tackle them, then no amount of reforms can last the course. If the Quaid’s vision of Pakistan is to be sharpened into focus, MQ will have to take a shovel in the short period available to him and clean out the dirt that these sacred cows have accumulated over the years.
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