The Punjab government’s crackdown on the police force for overstepping authority, etc, during PTI’s march on the capital in late May, is just another example of doing the right thing in the wrong way. The government has already suspended 25 SHOs and sent notices to a number of other officials, so it must have all the evidence it needs. Why, then, is it giving a political colour to the exercise? There are procedures in place for just such things, and simply following them would have sufficed to make examples out of said officers so this particular problem is taken care of; hopefully forever. There’s no doubt that the bureaucracy is notorious for readily becoming enablers for political administrations. And this is one problem that desperately needs to be settled once and for all. But doing it in a way that sends clear political messages will only expose the other great failing of the civil service; that it simply shuts down and refuses to function whenever it feels pressure. This way the police force may well refuse to follow this government’s own orders, for fear of a similar backlash should other parties come to power. Surely inducing yet more paralysis into the service is no way of making it more efficient. The simple fact of the matter is that the most important province of the federation has been unable to function properly ever since PTI’s government folded into the centre. And while it is understandable, given our history, that the top political parties are doing what they can to hurt each other’s interests, at the end of the day it’s the people that lose the most. To add a non-functional police force, or one that’s always thinking twice about following orders will hardly make things better for anybody, including Chief Minister Pervaiz Elahi’s government in Lahore. *