It has become a routine affair to read and hear headlines announcing the impending or ordered suspensions and dismissals of officers as an answer to lapses of security, administration or general mismanagement these days. More or less such decisions have come to be recognised as an instrument of redress and governance. After the recent incident involving Sikander in Islamabad, the interior minister also announced that he had ordered the concerned authorities to suspend all those police officials who allowed Zamarud Khan to take such a foolhardy chance and breach the cordon.
But it needs to be asked, are these instant suspensions and dismissals the solution to problems?
The public acceptance of this sort of management of affairs can be attributed to a handful of reasons, a prime one being the sentimentality of the Pakistani nation, which gives in quickly to emotions of rage, excitement, incitement rather than giving room to thought and reasoning. Such decisions in the wake of unpleasant occurrences sate the public agitation rather rapidly, instead of implementing processes and penalties that shall act as preventions of replication of the same in the future.
This serves the politicians well too. By ordering such actions and in the context of the public reaction as mentioned above, the elected representatives emerge as leaders with a stringent and prompt fashion for imposing discipline. The sensational wrapping of these measures as news by the media only adds to their hollow lustre.
However, a degree of the public acceptance of such measures must not blur its nature from being recognised, which is but a knee-jerk phenomenon, a part of the larger system of governance in Pakistan that resorts to cosmetic fixes when confronted with the need to deal with deep-rooted troubles.
Immediate dismissals, suspensions of officials upon notice of a tragedy, dereliction of duties or a miscarriage of administration is in itself a miscarriage of governance and administration.
In his article titled “The PML-N vs the Channels of Non-Delivery” in a national daily on July 10, 2013, Mosharraf Zaidi excellently highlighted the direction the government needs to adopt if it hopes to succeed in the resolution of the country’s difficulties: “If the PML-N is serious about sustaining democracy, it has to deliver sustainable change. To do so, it needs to invest heavily not just in the big-ticket outcomes it needs for re-election, but crucially in the procedural coherence and integrity of government. Dramatic reforms in the civil service, in local governments, and in public financial management are essential to the outcomes politicians seek.
Without such reforms, any outcomes Pakistani democrats achieve will be difficult to come by — they will be temporary, and they will be unsustainable. In the medium- and long-term, failure to reform Pakistan’s channels of delivery is the single most dangerous threat to Pakistani democracy.”
It is therefore evident that the problems and shortcomings within Pakistan’s system must be addressed rather than quick fixes to the problems that are their spillover; structural reforms are needed now more than ever. The recurrence of unfortunate occurrences, either in the shape of the recent collision of a rickshaw with a train or security lapses, all are part of the larger system of structural defects and failures in Pakistan that continue unabated.
The knee-jerk reactions of governance and redressing can act as hasty bandaging of seepages of the system’s weaknesses and loopholes but only perpetuate the cycle that abets it.
The 17 young lives that perished in the school bus tragedy in Gujrat cannot be brought back or done justice to by the mere arrest of the driver or the suspension of his licence to drive but other lives can be protected from being lost with greater legislation against gas cylinders in vehicles and its effective implementation along with safety regulations.
What is needed instead of or beyond numerous instant dismissals and suspensions is a tightly-timetabled, impartial, thorough examination and investigation — even if it shall lead to the same end as suspensions and dismissals — of the incidents, with a complete account of the contexts of circumstances, people and causes involved. Not only will this course of action aid swift retribution of those found to be responsible but also provide for introspection on the system itself, identification of its faults and options for correction, Moreover, it shall pave the path for sustainable prevention and reform, which is essential for the short and long-term wellbeing of Pakistan.
Prevailing structural inertia and incompetence that sprout regrettable and ill-fated incidents can only be dealt with through reforms instead of immediate, perennial short-term measures to compensate for these sporadic occurrences that only cause them to appear somewhere else again and again. And only then can Pakistan be alleviated from the morass it remains bogged down in.
The writer is a Lahore-based student with a keen eye on national and global affairs. She blogs at http://hafsakhawaja.wordpress.com