Daily Times

This past year, Pakistan has presented a bewildering maze of imponderables. With the lists of the truthful and the virtuous expanding exponentially, there is none left whom one could hold responsible for the country’s increasing woes.

A seventy-year old Pakistan has turned into a land where everyone claims absolute freedom to say or do whatever one may desire to, or whatever may suit one’s interest or inclination. This is always accompanied by passionate insistence that every such statement made or deed done be believed to be rendered in earnest, without a shade of doubt.

Through the years, one has seen the line separating the right from the wrong grow dull. In this land of righteousness, it has finally disappeared altogether. In reality, it is doing the wrong which is construed as the virtuous. It is also the sole measure for winning accolades, fame and fortune, while the depleting few committed to following the honourable course are reduced to not only becoming the butt of crass humour, they also have to fight for survival.

Nawaz Sharif was disqualified by the Supreme Court (SC) from holding public office and multiple corruption cases are sub-judice against him, but he and his cohorts claim his absolute indispensability to the state. They accuse some unseen powers for having conspired against him and his right to rule ad nauseam.

It is also vital that, instead of providing space to militant bands,a change of narrative is incorporated to move away from the religiosity-laden outpouring of excessive regression and sentimentalism. The state should also undertake steps to get rid of the apparel of religion that it has been donning to its own detriment

He and his family members issue conflicting statements from public platforms, yet they expect the judges to plug their ears and shut their eyes, accepting all such depositions as singularly truthful. A letter that lands from the Mars, and which no one is willing to vouch for, is presented as Holy Scripture, thus unimpeachable evidence of his innocence.

When the venom of their diatribes cannot dent the fact sheet and the cases appear to proceed towards further embarrassment and shame, the level of desperation increases. So, support is solicited from the old partners-in-crime who had intervened to secure a pardon for them in the past also. Amid a spate of rumours, the younger brother takes off for Saudi Arabia which is followed by the flight of the older one.

There is also this party that bases its politics on the graves of its past leaders. They keep rising from the dead every time a public meeting is organised requiring some slogan-chanting. Blatantly and shamefacedly denying all acts of wrongdoing, the one who hijacked the party on the basis of a ‘will’ has administered it the dreaded death knell. It is the same party that, not very long ago, was considered a credible federal outfit boasting of the likes of ZAB and Benazir as its leaders. The efforts for raising another leader of compatible charisma have already been buried six-foot down under.

Then there are a host of religious concoctions which have adopted Pakistan to experiment their regressive indoctrinations and prepare bands of zealots to hold the state hostage. One such enactment was witnessed recently when a couple of thousand marauders, riding the crest of a religious edict, were able to bring the federal capital to a virtual standstill. By ceding to their demands lock, stock and barrel, the state degenerated to its lowest level of esteem.

Mired in grave internal divisions, Pakistan’s anti-terror policy remains plagued with ambiguities and contradictions. This has elicited growing international censure, spearheaded by the new US administration. Pressure on Pakistan has also grown to take cognisance and initiate steps for the elimination of all terrorist networks without discrimination. From ‘no sanctuaries’ to ‘no organised sanctuaries’, its self-curtailing transition has failed to win it friends among the international comity of nations.

Pakistan’s regional isolation is dented only by its growing strategic partnership with China whose mammoth economic investment, viewed as a game-changer, is being increasingly put under the scanner by domestic and international analysts in terms of its ultimate benefit to the country, and the entanglements that it may carry along the way.

Simultaneously, China is also helping Pakistan improve its relations with Afghanistan for the cause of regional economic integration and propel the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) westward to the Central Asian republics. With increasing financial woes at home and depleting foreign exchange reserves and exports, Pakistan’s estrangement from the US and increasing multidimensional dependence on China is being viewed with a high level of concern.

The narrative of the military acting beyond its constitutional limits has gained further ground in the last year. In fact, it has become the basis of the politics of the ones who stand disgraced in the eyes of law. If there has been trespassing — and one may be constrained to accept that such trespassing may have occurred at times — it is principally owed to the rampant corruption and gross incompetence of the political leadership that they have not been able to establish their credibility, thereby ceding space to other actors to look beyond their constraints.

The efforts directed towards making individuals ascendant over the state interests, thus immune to accountability and legal injunctions, is driving the country into the realm of the ungovernable. By any appraisal, the writ of the state has to be applicable indiscriminately on all its citizens irrespective of their stature and position. Taking recourse to the dictum of ‘some being more equal than others’ will be tantamount to destroying the wobbly edifice on which the state stands, thus accelerating the process of its ultimate crumbling.

The one step that needs to be undertaken immediately is to ensure that the law of the land applies to all without exception, no shortcuts are allowed to escape the dragnet of justice and effective mechanisms are put in place to implement that. The state will be shorn of its writ and legitimacy if it becomes an instrument in facilitating a supra-legal escape for criminals on the behest of foreign interventionists.

It is also vital that, instead of providing space to fanatical militant bands, a change of narrative is incorporated to move away from the religiosity-laden outpouring of excessive regression and sentimentalism. The state should also undertake steps to get rid of the apparel of religion that it has been donning to its own detriment.

Into the New Year, it is hoped that we’ll adopt the corrective path and the country will be stopped from plunging further into the deepening pit of self-denials and policy aberrations which have assumed glaring proportions, and which the world has begun to see through.

The writer is a political and security strategist, and heads the Regional Peace Institute — an Islamabad-based think tank. Email: raoofhasan@hotmail.com. Twitter: @RaoofHasan

Published in Daily Times, January 2^nd 2018.