Daily Times

A group of persons with a common mission and agreed procedures for a achieving it may be seen as an institution. Agreement on procedures is indispensable for this undertaking. Institutionalisation is a denial of one-man rule. It represents mutuality of deliberation and action on the part of the group’s members. The number and kinds of institutions in a developed society can be infinite. Legislatures, judiciary, bureaucracy, chambers of commerce and industry, bar associations, student unions, and a variety of professional organisations, places of worship, among many others, are all institutions. Some of them are stable and even flourishing while others languish away.

Within the domain of governance, the higher judiciary is doing remarkably well. It is generally perceived as a guardian of the constitution, impartial, fearless, and wise. It has taken suo motu notice of wrongs done by public agencies and provided redress to aggrieved citizens. Its posture has influenced the attitudes and conduct of the provincial high courts. The judiciary at the district and sub-district levels is slow, cumbersome, and in many cases corrupt. The courts at all levels are burdened with huge backlogs of unresolved cases.

The army is the most powerful institution in the country. It is a fighting force consisting of several hundred thousand well-armed men. It is hard to assess its effectiveness, for it has not fought a full-scale war for 40 years, and it did not win a conclusive victory in any of the wars it had fought earlier. The army chief and his top officers also operate as manipulators in the country’s internal politics. They finance political groups and individuals of their choice, and they make and break political coalitions and alliances. These operations have botched up politics and governance. The army has taken on this role mainly to fill the vacuum of power created by the ineffectiveness of the civilian regimes. It does not need any more energising; it is energetic enough.

Many of the political observers seem to think that the National Assembly has lost much of its efficacy. Actions or inaction are often attributed to it. This is a terminological confusion. Collectivities do not act; persons composing them do, and usually they are members of the majority party in the House. It is the government of the day that creates most of the legislature’s business. It brings in resolutions and proposed legislation, which the Assembly debates and votes in or out. Many observers rate the National Assembly as a do-nothing organisation. That may be the case because the present government is lethargic, unimaginative, and lazy. It does not want to do the work that governments normally do, which, beyond the maintenance of law and order, consists of delivering needed services to the people. It may be said that there is nothing wrong with the institution as such.

Note that it is also parliament’s function to oversee the executive’s implementation of the laws it has made. This is particularly the preserve of the opposition benches. It is done through call attention notices, adjournment motions, and no-confidence motions. The function of oversight is performed most effectively during the Question Hour, which is the most engaging part of the Assembly’s proceedings. Notice of the questions to be asked is given ahead of time to enable the ministers concerned to prepare their answers. Questions are asked not only to elicit information but also to expose the government’s failings or acts of malfeasance. Supplementary questions, arising from the government’s response to the main question, are framed spontaneously. A minister’s ability to anticipate them, and his presence of mind and shrewdness with which he handles them, are tests of his competence.

Judges, police officers and tax collectors have been at work since the earliest beginnings of organised society. Together with other functionaries who surfaced later, they have been known as a bureaucracy. They are not held in high public esteem and affection but that fact does not bother them. They are indispensable and they know it. Over the last several thousand years they have perfected the art of self-preservation. They are energetic enough in performing the mission that they have chosen for themselves, which may not be the same as the one that is expected of them. Governments have from time to time appointed commissions to study the bureaucracy with the object of improving its dedication to the public interest. But few, if any, of them have achieved the desired objective. The bureaucracy in Pakistan is both corrupt and inefficient, and it shows no signs of willingness to change its character.

Political parties are still another institution in the area of governance that deserves our attention. A political party is a body of persons seeking authority and power to order society in its image. It sponsors a package of values, priorities, and a programme of action for which it wants to build public support. Parties contest elections and hope to form the government resulting from them and thus implement their programmes. A successful party is well grounded in the affections of the people and to this end it maintains contact with them. Its members elect their office-holders. Political parties in Pakistan answer this description only partially. They do have some basis in mass support but that support is largely focused on the top leader or a very small group of party notables. There is often an element of hereditary succession at the top level, their leadership going from father to son and grandson. A few cases in point may be mentioned: Shahbaz Sharif to Hamza in PML-N, Mufti Mahmud to Maulana Fazlur Rehman in JUI, Bacha Khan to Abdul Wali Khan to Asfandyar Wali Khan in the ANP, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto to Benazir to Bilawal in the PPP. Relatives have not inherited top leadership in the MQM and Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), but Mr Altaf Hussain and Mr Imran Khan have been coterminous with their respective organisations. In conclusion, we may submit that political parties in Pakistan are not energetic enough as institutions. The trend towards one-man rule is dominant here as it is elsewhere in politics and governance. Some of the other institutions mentioned above also deserve to be studied, but I have run out of space and will have to defer that undertaking to another time.

The writer, professor emeritus at the University of Massachusetts, is currently a visiting professor at the Lahore School of Economics. He can be reached at anwarsyed@cox.net