There is now a palpable, and growing, sense of unreality about the political life of Pakistan. The brave promises of February and March are revealed as empty at worst and threadbare in their fulfilment at best. Promises, even those made in sincerity, leave politicians as hostages to fortune, and fortune has not favoured the new government.
There has been some minor tinkering at the margins with the easing of controls on trades and student unions and a generally relaxed attitude towards the media; although we have yet to see some of the braver promises honoured. We must however welcome the fact that the new government had eschewed the beating of those who protest against it for the most part - and we welcome also the re-appearance of the words ‘peaceful demonstration’ in the public prints.
Such modest changes are not enough to substantially alter the perception of the public at large, the perception that in truth little has changed for the better; and as evidence they cite rising prices of everything for everybody, everybody including the poorest and those least able to absorb the increases. Militancy continues to advance, indeed may be said to have moved forward more quickly under the eyes of the new regime, and there is a sense of encircling fear among many.
To be sure, the new government inherited a fistful of intractable problems as well as discovering a slew of unknown unknowns once the economic veil was lifted…but there comes a point at which you can no longer blame everybody else for the nations ills – and the finger is now coming round to point at the current dispensation.There comes a point when responsibility for whatever may be wrong, and the continuing failure to put it right, sits in the hands of those elected so recently.
It is the issue of the restoration of the judges, and the protracted and seeming intractable wrangles that accompany it, which has perhaps most damaged the government in the eyes of many. This was a centre-piece, the rally-point; in the days leading up to the election, and today it stagnates, becalmed in a pool of political ambiguity. There seemed to be an assumption that the matter could be resolved in a snap of the fingers…it never could have been and those who promised to do so displayed an irresponsibility that ill-serves all of them.
Parliament, government and governance are all one-and-a-piece in a democratic country but we seem to have arrived at a position in which all three are now suffering considerable handicaps as institutions of state.
Parliament itself is something of an empty vessel – MNA’s are not turning up to the chamber and several sessions have had to be prorogued for lack of a quorum. Unless the legislators actually start legislating the institution will never empower itself. Parliamentary committees remain dormant; others are yet to be formed. Boring work it may be, but parliamentary committees are the nuts and bolts that hold the whole edifice together on the legislative side. Neglect them at your peril.
The government itself, or as many members of it as can be shoehorned into a stretch-747 seems to spend more time aloft deciding what it would like to purchase from the duty-free trolley than it does with its feet on the ground. The junketing to-and-fro in July will have cost the exchequer many millions of rupees as absentee party leaders called the faithful to their doorsteps in places other than Pakistan. The common man – frequently invoked, rarely consulted and heaven-forbid that he ever be listened to – will have looked at this display of wilful profligacy with cynical resignation. We might ask whether anybody ever thought of having a top-level meeting right here in Pakistan? Yes…Pakistan, that country you are currently flying over on your way to your next meeting…about Pakistan. There may of course be pressing reasons to meet anywhere but at home, with the ever-present listening ears of the sensitive agencies perhaps being one of them; but the cost of the operation to an impoverished and indebted nation hardly seems justifiable.
Ministers who are aboard the flying caravansary are themselves burdened with multiple portfolios, and work in the knowledge that the coalition that struggles to be the government has the structural integrity of the average ice-cream cone. Government, in a very real sense, is absent from the land and could be in imminent danger of falling apart if it stands still long enough.
And then there’s governance…rather ‘what governance and by who?’ seems to the crucial question. Governance has been shunted into a siding while Messrs. Zardari and Sharif play out their own personal battles with one another and the President. The small matter of judicial reinstatement referred to above, once of vital importance, has shrivelled and withered to the occasional short march (most of the ‘long march’ participants being exhausted by a walk any longer than that from their front door to the passenger seat of their Pajero) and some desultory sloganeering for the benefit of the cameras. Governance, such as it is, is on auto-pilot, in ‘drift’ mode and government in the holistic sense is by remote control.
How little has changed in the last fifty years or so. It may not be of trouble or consequence to the parliamentarians and the grandees as they swoop overhead, but a report in the last month said that Pakistan had received $58 billion (billion!) from foreign donors since 1950 to support the health and population sectors and that there was very little to show for it. And this is only in two sectors of the development agenda, taking no account of the other billions poured unsuccessfully into revising and improving the national curriculum and the education system generally. The country stands at number 137 in the UN’s human development index and the entire administration, says the report, is corrupt, inefficient, riddled with jobbery and lacking direction.
Hmmmm…what was that you said?…sorry, just wanted to check on how much that 500cc bottle of Chanel Number 5 was. Oh, and steward, could you ask the pilot to radio ahead and ask my driver to pick up the children from school…in Dubai.
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