Establishing rule of law There are two major ills in Pakistan that are the root cause of most social issues and injustices in Pakistan. First is the disrespect for law, rules, procedures and standards. Everyone breaks laws whether rich or poor. But rich has less chance of being caught while poor when caught has to make sure he has enough funds to pay the bribes or be prepared to go behind jail bars. Police has become the instrument of exploitation. When a policeman approaches a citizen his instinctive reaction is fear rather than a sense of reassurance that he will be protected. Rules are also applied selectively. When a celebrity goes to the airport or any other place he breeze passes through security, immigration counter and boarding while citizens that may have been in line ahead of him go through security procedures. Same thing is experienced in almost every walk of life. Building codes are broken in both government and civilian construction. Citizens don’t feel hesitation to extend the boundary of their boundary walls to encroach on the public land. Teachers that are supposed to teach ethics and morality are blatantly engaged in violation of rules. Bottom line is we are a nation of law breakers. The other ailment inflicting us is our pursuit of titles. We feel that nothing can be achieved unless a person has a title associated with his name. So it is the title that works not the capability of the person. Our obsession with titles is so high that a person has a sense of insecurity if he does not have a title. It is for this reason that we see all kinds of plaque, flags and funny looking number plates on people’s personal cars. In one province we have given titles of parliamentary secretaries to everyone that asked for it. Whether these parliamentary secretaries are doing any work or not is not important at least it is keeping their egos satisfied. Same is the situation in other provinces. The question then is how do we get out of this situation? My personal view is that the first step is to create a political party that adheres to laws and constitution. This political party which has support from grass roots can then lead by example. All members of this party including its top leaders exercise strict adherence to rules, laws and constitution. This will enable this political party to establish a moral authority which they can then extend to others in the society by appealing to them to observe the laws. Unfortunately so far we don’t have any such example in the country although people are hungry for it. There are some parties that have the potential to embark on this path. But they have also succumbed to the pressure of seats and political power at the cost of breaching constitution of their own party. One of my personal objectives in politics is to establish the dignity of merit. What is this chriya? I leave that lecture for some other day.
Posted on: Fri, 04 Oct 2013 04:59:53 +0000
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