The entrails of our society, particularly in Karachi, are hanging out. Over a hundred targeted killings may seem like another gruesome statistic. And we have been through so many in recent times that nothing registers for too long. But this is a clear evidence of state retreat, if not state failure.
The truly alarming part is that political actors controlling the state structure in one form or another are linked to the killings, whereas they are required to defend it. This adds a particularly difficult overhang to an already weakened police apparatus that has poor training and poor technical ability, and is riddled with political appointees.
The last part becomes a critical factor in Karachi because of deep political polarisation. Over the last twenty years, the police, indeed all other departments in the city, have gone through a transformation. Whenever an opportunity has presented itself, political parties have stuffed their supporters into the lower ranks of the bureaucracy and police.
This has deeply eroded the autonomy of the state structure. The upper ranks may be apolitical, but by the time an order filters down to the operational level it is seen with a partisan lens. More importantly, it is transmitted to political patrons, and their take on it colours implementation. This leaves the officers hanging in the air, seemingly in charge but without real command or control. It is difficult, if not impossible, for the state to function in such circumstances.
Our entire system of government is based on state autonomy and neutrality. It is indeed a legacy of colonial rule, as in it an autonomous state structure without political or local links was an essential. But while this made the government distant from the people, it had advantages in a society that is deeply divided by family, clan and tribal, and now political, loyalties.
While such a bureaucracy’s ability to undertake development and promote social growth was limited, its neutrality was an asset when it came to maintaining order or negotiating through the minefield of sectional disputes. It is beginning to lose even this advantage. Besides a general erosion of ability through poor educational standards, its alignment with local interest groups has thrown merit, and the much bandied about good governance, out of the window.
Karachi is an example of this decline. Gang or political warfare erupts and the state becomes a bystander. Rangers have to be called in and at least one party openly asks for the army to intervene. Let us remember that anytime a paramilitary or a military force is asked for, it is an admission of failure for the normal governing structures. The frequency with which this is happening. and not just in Karachi, is a loud announcement of our deteriorating governing ability.
We have to get our politics right, but we also have to get our governance right. And how will this happen if the entire effort of our political masters is to bend the state structure to their will. And they are doing this without taking responsibility, because all orders are signed by civil servants.
Political governments have come and gone, but nobody has decided to change the rules of business so that the political masters become the authorised signatories on orders that they ask the civil servants to issue on their behalf. Most often these are verbal and in one case the prime minister used to write on yellow stick-on chits that were removed later. In other words, it was a deliberate attempt not to leave behind a paper trail.
In such an environment where politicians, with honourable exceptions, refuse to take responsibility for their orders, complying civil servants start to appear partisan or linked to a particular person. It is therefore not a surprise that at least some have begun to be known by their political affiliations.
A classical demonstration of this was the brief and ill-fated imposition of governor’s rule in Punjab. The first order of business for the new management was to transfer a number of top civil servants out of the province and get new people in. These newcomers were all booted out the moment the previous setup came back.
It is this politicisation of the bureaucracy that is adding to all the other troubles we have. A civil servant performing diligently today under this or that political government is inadvertently tainting himself or herself with partisan colours for the next setup. And liable to be punished for it. How do we expect him or her to keep only merit as a guiding principle for performance?
This political overhang is now also being deliberately extended to the judiciary. The statement by Information Minister Kaira about the chief justice of the Supreme Court meeting Mr Shahbaz Sharif is a naked attempt at politicising the judiciary. It has been denied by everybody, but it was deliberately articulated to imply that there is a close nexus between one political party and the Supreme Court.
This is highly dangerous, because if the judiciary is also politicised there is no arbiter left in the system. There are fairly eminent people openly advocating that the government should not comply with the orders of the Supreme Court that are beyond the mandate of the Constitution. In other words, it is for the government to judge the constitutionality of a Supreme Court order.
If this advice is followed it will of course bring constitutional governance to a grinding halt. It is the responsibility of the courts, and particularly the Supreme Court, to interpret and decide what is constitutional. This is not the prerogative of any other state authority. If the government chooses to implement only that which it considers legal and constitutional, the court is as good as dead. Will that serve the cause of democracy?
In a similar vein, there are suggestions that the military should publicly declare, before the fact, that it will not implement Supreme Court orders issued under Article 190 of the Constitution; it will refer them to the ministry of defence, as Gen Karamat had done in 1998.
Besides asking the military to anticipate events and answer hypothetical scenarios, it amounts to dragging it into politics. If the purpose is that it should declare its neutrality by such a posture, it would actually do the reverse. It will pull it into the political debate. And if the military’s statement on the Kerry Lugar bill was wrong by some reckoning, another on a sensitive subject cannot be right.
It is an indicator of the state we are in that every institution in the country is being tarred with the brush of partisanship or accused of having agendas of its own. This is a sure recipe for failure. We are in a very difficult battle, not just against terrorism but poverty and a host of other problems. We have to be at our best, or we will not succeed.
Source:www.thenews.com.pk, Friday, January 15, 2010 written by Shafqat Mahmood
Email: shafqatmd@gmail.com
