Corporate and Individual Safety
Whether it is Shaukat Raza Mirza in Karachi or Siddique Khan Kanju in Multan, the elimination of human beings by violent means is almost always for a purpose, whether or not they have a standing in society. Except for those targeted by the totally insane, there is always motivation for murder. The assumptions for Siddique Khan Kanju (and his former MPA Joya) are reasonably straightforward, political violence created a blood cycle, for those who tend to live by the sword it is only a matter of time before opponents discover a chink in the armour. Shaukat’s was a far different proposition. Was it a cold blooded attempt to create economic disorder in the country given that before taking over as MD Pakistan State Oil (PSO) he had been a high profile executive of a US company? Was it a Shia-Sunni thing? Was it linked to employee unrest because of the downsizing of PSO? Or simply a hit ordered by a combination of overseas corporate entities with their local employee collaborators who stood to lose billions of rupees annually because they ran up against an honest man who tightened the rules of the game to their detriment? In picking Shaukat Mirza for a professional hit by what are almost certainly hired assassins at a carefully chosen ambush point, the perpetrators of the dastardly act not only covered their tracks but succeeded beyond measure in terrorizing a whole range of corporate executives, some of them expatriate Pakistanis who had left far safer (and better paid) jobs abroad to serve their country. Even if they should choose jobs linked to now be controversy they will be averse to rocking the existing boat. In Karachi, the nation’s commercial capital, the corporate individual is now a person besieged physically, in fending for his safety and that of his family, and psychologically, out of the apprehension of impending doom without any warning. Abraham Maslow’s theory of a hierarchy of needs of a human being includes self-actualization, esteem and love, but has at its very base, safety and survival.
Apocalypse Now
If posterity were to take events to pinpoint exactly when the clock struck midnight and Karachi ran out of time, the brutal assassination of Mohammad Salahuddin, outspoken Editor of Takbeer and the flight of renowned social worker Maulana Sattar Edhi to London, ostensibly in fear of his life, would serve as symbolic markers. Karachi is now a city filled with fear, full of apprehension of the known and the unknown. For years there has been no dearth of soothsayers predicting impending doom but they can have no satisfaction in being proved right, only contempt for those at the helm of affairs over the past decade who were so deaf and blind that it is not surprising that they acted dumb in the face of catastrophe.
Appoint an Administrator for the whole of Karachi NOW, for purposes of perception of authority let us call the person Lieutenant Governor (or some such title) and give him (or her) a sweeping mandate for an interim period of one year over all the law enforcement and civic agencies in the city, with extraordinary powers under Article 245 of the Constitution to rule over Karachi. The Lieutenant Governor will be directly responsible to the Federal Cabinet through the Governor and will effect such changes in the administrative control of the city as he thinks fit in keeping the city running, in supersession to all other Federal and Provincial entities that are working today. As a psychological stamp of authority, he must have an office in the Governor’s House where he could use the services of the Citizens Police Liaison Committee (CPLC), an outstanding example of citizen participation in solving urban problems.