A Rolling Stone gathers no Moss

I am grateful to my readers some of who respond to my columns, thanks to the email technology that makes it so easy. Between the appreciations for my analytic approach, one common question keeps arising: What is the solution to the anomalies that I highlight? While it is complimentary to be considered worthy of counsel, it is not an easy request to accommodate, neither it is futile to ignore. Today I shall try to elucidate my viewpoint on this.

Column writing is essentially quite a pedantic business if one adopts a pedagogic approach from an ivory tower and dispenses solutions to complex problems in less than 1500 words each week. I don’t have the ability or the inclination for such intellectual audacity because I am neither a bureaucrat nor a military officer. Politics suits my temperament as much as sugar to a diabetic. From a theological standpoint I keep trembling in my shoes as to what will become of me on the day of judgement, like every good Muslim should. So what is left is a curious and compassionate mind that will not stop asking awkward questions. I share these questions with my readers. My columns are as simple as that – pebbles flung into the stagnant pool of communal thinking hoping to create some waves to oxygenate the water.

Asking the right question is half the problem solved; as for the solutions I don’t believe any single mind can put a claim to that. In an open, democratic world today solutions ought to be left to communal opinion. An individual can offer proposals and agendas to be pursued through dialogue and debate. Eventually, the ability of the community, or the opinion makers, to make the right choices determines the fate of nations. Imposition of individual will (by dictators, fascists or fanatics) eventually collapses to create chaos. History has shown this time and again. There are exceptions, of course, where individual leaders have lead nations with a strong hand but their success rested on their ability to deliver growth and prosperity, which in time created social environment for the development of liberal democracies. The demagogues became inadvertent harbingers of just and stable social orders in their countries.

However much I disapprove of simplistic solutions, since we are on the subject I believe three complimentary elements are the root cause of all the problems that we have been mulling over since the past 56 years as a nation. Unless these fundamental issues are addressed candidly and honestly I see very little hope of redemption from our chronic issues. The three elements are credibility, stability and economic prosperity. There is a linear relationship between the three: Without credibility in the governance system of the country we cannot have stability and without stability of government we can not have economic prosperity. Constitution holds the key to all three and their sequential interdependence. I have refrained from commenting on LFO and current constitutional confusion till hence because of this understanding. The malaise goes deeper than LFO or the 1973 constitution. Pakistan has existed in a state of constitutional emergencies since inception as a political laboratory; it is nothing new and we as people have become immune to the angst of living under a perpetual question mark on the legitimacy of the governments, military or civilian. This has created a credibility crisis. No one’s integrity is beyond the pale; mutual suspicions weave such a web of allegations and rumours that that reality and fantasy become indistinguishable.

The credibility crisis has kept stability at bay. No government has served its full tenure. Even the military regimes met premature terminations through civil unrest or elimination of key persons under extraordinary circumstances. One such termination cost half the country. That was basically a constitutional crisis. Lack of stability and consequent swing in policies prevented Pakistan from becoming an Asian tiger with all the potential it held in the fifties and sixties.

Lack of stability capped growth, except for the well-connected few. Poverty has grown to unacceptably high levels of 38 percent. Per capita income has fallen from $ 510 in the early nineties to below $ 430 now. Pakistan’s per capita growth index was lower than Ethiopia’s during the nineties.

Stability of governments is a function of constitutional workability, not necessarily supremacy if it is not respected unequivocally. A permanent settlement of constitutional alternatives remains elusive to the national polity, even 56 years after independence. Three issues have plagued lawmakers and assemblies: One, how and to what extend should religious injunctions be enshrined in the constitution. Second is the balance of power between the president and the prime minister. Third issue is the parity between federating units. East Pakistan broke away because the third issue could not be resolved. All three issues have a long history of arguments and debates that cannot be opened up here.

The point is that nations that cannot resolve fundamental constitutional issues for over half a century and trudge along on unresolved constitutional frameworks cannot hope to develop a governance system in sub-constitutional matters. If CBR fails to generate revenue, if police fails to ensure law and order, if FIA and NAB fail to wipe out corruption and people learn to live with dysfunctional agencies it is because they have resigned to dysfunctional democracies and dictatorships. Compromising with inefficiencies and governance imperfections becomes a mental habit. One primary compromise leads to thousand other compromises in daily lives down to the lowest levels of governance. Such widespread resignation is only sustainable because the whole country has gone into a state of denial, like an addict refusing to acknowledge a problem.

We as columnists keep pinching different parts of the body to break that denial and that is the most we can do in 1500 words every week. Columns are not a format for developing political thought, especially for a society that feels that there is fundamentally nothing wrong with us and amendment of a few laws and policies here and there should set things right.

There is a dearth of rational and coherent political thought in our culture because thought processes are circumscribed by certain pre-determined and pre-ordained parameters that are sacrosanct. I am not absolving myself from all responsibility of thought because of this. In terms of solutions for our problems, I have authored a book, ‘Dysfunctional Democracy: A case for an alternative political system’ which is in print and should be on the shelves soon. It is a detailed diagnosis of political failures in the past and in context with geopolitical realities of today’s changing world around us, it proposes an agenda for reviewing all the fundamental issues regarding our constitutional crisis.

Although constitutional expertise is not my field, I chose to write on this subject with a strong belief that unless we have a clear and stable vision of ourselves reflected honestly in the constitution, it is futile to hope for economic and social reforms in the country. I refuse to delude myself that we are on the way to a democratic panacea. Neither do I endorse a temptation to blame it all on the military. We have caused a collective constitutional failure. Without a stable and functional constitution, a country is like a rolling stone that gathers no moss. This should be our first and foremost priority today, as it should have been fifty years ago. It is never too late to start a fresh review of constitutional options without bindings of past prejudices or metaphysical assumptions. I have tried to build a case for this in my book.

In the columns, readers will have to live with morsels of bitter truths wrapped in a bit of wit.

Iqbal Mustafa
25 October 2003

1250 words