Daily Times

In democracy, the writ of state is constructed through the public. The constitution is actually a contract between the rulers and the rued. Each and every component of the state is supposed to respect the constitutional framework. Constitution is the sacred document of the state that has been ill-treated, bettered, and abrogated but not followed.

The elements who do not obey the constitution must be punished. Democracy is an ideology; it paves the ways of ideological control on the minds of the masses.  Coercion is the opposite of ideology. But the ideologically weak states have to use the coercion for the establishment of the writ of the state. The weak governments cannot establish the writ of state as they themselves misuse it.

Now look at the contemporary agitation which locked the whole Pakistan for four day. It is really the worst in any country. There was no sign of the writ of the state.

A few clerics made the hatred speeches and gathered the brainless people for destructing the citizen’s properties, vehicles, shops and even the fruit/vegetables carts of the poor for the sake of nothing. Such agitations have become common in Pakistan. The important thing is that government of Pakistan has not been yet able to make the policies to curb them. There is a lack of proactive strategies to deal with such heinous kinds of protests.

Writ is applicable on student like Peshawar university, who took stand against the raise in their fee, the government writ is applicable on the lawyers who protests against the judiciary, state writ is enforced on the women’s protests for their rights but the writ of state is not applicable on such agitators who lock the whole country without any logic or rationality. Their demands are made to break the laws. This is hilarious for a country like Pakistan that is already destabilized economically and politically

Who is the real ruler of Pakistan? It is an important question to be answered. The real rulers of the country are those to whom PM Imran khan called them ‘a small group of people’. They have the power to put the constitution and law under their feet whenever they want to do it. Let’s discuss from the past events. When Hamid Meer was shot in Karachi, private television channel blamed to Gen. ZaheerUl Islam for this act and they have shown the picture of ZaheerUl Islam with repetition on their television but they didn’t ask for apology from Gen. ZaheerUl Islam. But when the issue of blasphemy was raised due to the statement of Shaista Wahidi at morning show, the channel have asked apology for many times even during their transmissions at different times. It was the real power of those who rule the country.

General Qamar Bajwa has been working on one of the most powerful positions but when he was promoted to this position, there was a rumor that he was Qadyani. Ultimately he moved for Umrah and his wife conducted a ‘Meelad’ at their house to just prove that we are the Muslims. If the army chief has to do such acts to prove himself Muslim then who the hell common people are.

Now look at the present speech of PM Imran Khan, he stated that don’t challenge the writ of the state but his main focused was to prove himself a true Muslim in his whole speech. Even Imran has put his feet without shoes at Medina are also an example. All these examples show that who the real rulers of Pakistan are.

Now come to point of the writ of the government, the writ is only applicable to the innocent people who have conducted peaceful protests.

Writ is applicable on student like Peshawar university, who took stand against the raise in their fee, the government writ is applicable on the lawyers who protests against the judiciary, state writ is enforced on the women’s protests for their rights but the writ of state is not applicable on such agitators who lock the whole country without any logic or rationality. Their demands are made to break the laws. This is hilarious for a country like Pakistan that is already destabilized economically and politically.

The whole country was burnt for more than three days but the writ of the state was not seen anywhere. The government was threatened because they don’t have the proactive polices to curb such agitations.

There is a huge loss of the citizens by this agitation. The roads were blocked, the people couldn’t move from one place to another place even the ‘goods’ were blocked to move anywhere.

The schools, colleges, universities and many other institutions were closed. A number of buildings were raided, cars, motor bikes, buses, food carts, and vegetables carts were burnt for spreading the message of peace (shame on such acts). It is the worst that a woman died while giving birth to a child because she couldn’t reach to hospital.

Who will pay for the whole loss? Is there any policy or measure to deal with the losses of the poor citizens who pay the taxes from their birth certificate to death certificate just for the purpose of the security and safety of their lives and their belongings? There must be repercussion criteria for those who lost their vehicles or properties or carts and this repercussion must be fulfilled by these so called clerics. Otherwise government should take the responsibility to compensate them.

It is quite clear that the purpose of this agitation was not for the defence of Islam. Islam is the religion of peace and it promotes the message of peace. Everything which is done in last few days is against the basic principles of Islam and even human rights. A clause must be included in the blasphemy law that if someone will blame for blasphemy and he couldn’t prove it, he must be equally punished. This is the only way to reduce the blame game by using the religions.

In nutshell, the government and its institutions are the responsible for such pathetic incidents because they have never drawn any proactive strategy to deal them. Last year, there was a huge agitation at Faiz Abad, but government didn’t learn anything from it and they have not constituted any strategy or plan and it happened again. There is a dire need to work on making the strategies and policies through which the writ of state can be retained. If the government will not make the sound procedures to deal such incidents n the proactive basis, it will continuously repeat and repeat.

There is a suggestion for the government that it should allocate a large ground in every city for the protest. All the protestors can protest there but no one would be allowed to enter on the roads or even in the cities. If any of the group will deny the law to enter in the cities for the violent protest, they must be punished strictly.

The writer is a PhD Scholar, Media and Crime and author of different books on International Relations, Criminology and Gender Studies. He can be reached at fastian.mentor@gmail.com

Published in Daily Times, November 7^th 2018.