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Opinion If Karachi is to be normal again
Babar Sattar
Saturday, July 16, 2011
The writer is a lawyer based in Islamabad.
If democracy is government of the people, for the people and by the people, why do the people of Pakistan under democratic rule feel so desperately helpless? Why is it that after every decade or so a self-proclaimed messiah is able to usurp state control and the people do not prevent such a khaki saviour from appropriating their right to rule themselves? Let us dismiss at the outset the desirability or viability of khaki rule, controlled-democracy, a government of technocrats, the Bangladesh model, or any other concoction of the sort. Let us also reiterate that, no matter how excruciating continuing to suffer the present dispensation might seem, there is no sustainable alternative to supporting continuity of the constitutionally prescribed political process.
But does this automatically mean that we ought to settle for a farce in the name of democracy? Can the majority of a nation meaningfully distinguish between khaki saviours and civilian despots, both of whom unleash dogs of praetorianism upon them? If democratic rule doesnt translate into a system of governance ensuring municipal services to the ordinary citizen, why should he care about it? Will our unquestioning support for civilian autocracy strengthen or weaken democracy? Will we not be liable for complicity if we allow despots to proclaim territories of our country as well as political parties as personal fiefs and lord over them while masquerading as democrats? Will such politics of provincialism and tyranny not discredit the notion of self-governance and rule of law?
How will the ordinary citizen be empowered, his rights upheld and his interests served when political parties are treated as personal estates by their top leadership, sky-high barriers to entry within the political arena pre-empt the emergence of viable alternatives, and law and administrative machinery of the state is used to strengthen the hegemony of existing power brokers? And who will secure the rights of citizens to life and liberty, when patrons of parties already entrenched within a monopolistic political landscape unabashedly claim proprietary rights over territories they believe ought to fall within their dominion?
The mayhem in Karachi is yet another reminder of how our ruling political elites are primarily committed to adding more turf to their respective fiefs by acquiring greater control over state power and means of patronage, abusing power and exploiting public resources to nurture networks of personal patronage, and then using the states administrative machinery and patron-client networks to protect and defend personal fiefdoms. Karachi is in the throes of an ugly turf war between the MQM, the ANP and the PPP over the extent of exclusive and shared rights to own and exploit Karachi at will. And across Sindhs political spectrum the conduct of actors pointing fingers at one another is hardly distinguishable.
Let us start with the MQM. Here is a political party whose importance and strength emanates from its stranglehold over Karachi and its ability to unleash violence and bring the commercial hub of Pakistan to a grinding halt at will. That MQM chief Altaf Hussain continues to manoeuvre like a puppet this major political party with such significant representation in the Sindh and National Assemblies should be a case study in political science. Unless Altaf Bhai is a saint with unfathomable charisma, the reverence exhibited during his jocular telephone addresses and the complete absence of disagreement and dissent within his party ranks can only be understood in terms of fear.
Speaking to Karachi-wallas in private settings, youll hear umpteen stories of barbarism attributed to MQM goons and the familiar allegation that this is a fascist party whose sustenance lies in its ability and willingness to use violence and extortion as instruments of policy. But you will neither read about concrete allegations that can be brought before a court of law nor hear about them on any of the few dozen news channels. Anyone critical of the MQM and Altaf Bhai is unable to set foot in Karachi, as experienced by Imran Khan during the Musharaf regime. Criminal cases implicating the MQM do not go anywhere. Remember May 12, 2007, and the 45 innocent citizens who lost their lives as violence suddenly erupted across the city while the whole country watched in disbelief?
Continuing to mollycoddle the MQM is no prescription for Karachis malaise. But the joint PPP-ANP game plan of beating the MQM at its own game by raising competing militias and supporting them by appropriately tweaking Sindhs legal and administrative structures is the recipe of an even bigger disaster. It is claimed that the PPP-MQM alliance was unnatural from the word go. It was only a matter of time that the PPP would try and push the MQM back to its pre-Musharraf zone of influence in Karachi and Hyderabad, a move that the MQM would bitterly resist. And then there is the ANP, whose constituency and power within Karachi has grown manifold over the last decade without a proportionate enhancement of representation within government.
The unfortunate lesson that the PPP and the ANP seem to have learnt from the MQMs rise is to raise their own militant wings, arm them to the teeth and be ready and willing to fight pitched battles across the city in a bid to acquire and control more territory. To add fuel to fire, the PPP has also unleashed the hate-and-prejudice-spewing Zulfiqar Mirza upon Karachi: he not only stands accused of transforming the PPPs Aman (peace) Committees into instruments of violence but also represents the feudal mindset that perceives the title of badmash (goon) as a mark of honour. Keeping such a character at the helm could only mean that the PPP-ANP alliance in Sindh has decided to expand the terrain of their respective fiefs within Karachi by cutting the MQM down to size through use of force.
In this backdrop, the logic of introducing retrograde legal and administrative changes by reviving the commissionerate and discarding the Police Order, 2002, becomes obvious. All our political parties supported the 18th Amendment and wrote in Article 140A of the Constitution that each province shall devolve political, administrative and financial authority to the elected representatives of the local governments. Article 32 of the Constitution already mandates the state to encourage local government institutions composed of elected representatives of the areas concerned. Now, in utter disregard of these unambiguous provisions, provincial governments in Punjab, Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and Sindh have revived the commissionerate system that is based on the conviction that the citizen is unworthy of self-governance.
Be it disregard for an elected local-government system, scrapping a law conceived at transforming a colonial police structure into a citizen-friendly, service-oriented police, or abolishing the constitutional requirement to introduce democracy within political parties, the contempt exhibited by our political party heads for any instrument capable of empowering the ordinary citizen is all too obvious. And this, in turn, underscores the tragedy of democracy, constitutionalism and rule of law in Pakistan.
The only lasting solution to Karachis ailment is an agreement between all political parties to (i) deconstruct fiefdoms and the reign of terror that sustains them, (ii) de-weaponise and begin to function within the realm of law, and (iii) compete for political control on a level playing field on the basis of superior service delivery. Karachi as the commercial and industrial hub of Pakistan will keep attracting people from all over the country and its demography will continue to change. Unless the MQM, the ANP, the PPP (and even the Jamaat-e-Islami) realise that dividing this sprawling metropolis into fiefs and allocating control and ownership of territories and people on the basis of ethnicity will no longer work, this wretched city will continue to bleed.
Email: sattar@post.harvard.edu
Babar Sattar
Saturday, July 16, 2011
The writer is a lawyer based in Islamabad.
If democracy is government of the people, for the people and by the people, why do the people of Pakistan under democratic rule feel so desperately helpless? Why is it that after every decade or so a self-proclaimed messiah is able to usurp state control and the people do not prevent such a khaki saviour from appropriating their right to rule themselves? Let us dismiss at the outset the desirability or viability of khaki rule, controlled-democracy, a government of technocrats, the Bangladesh model, or any other concoction of the sort. Let us also reiterate that, no matter how excruciating continuing to suffer the present dispensation might seem, there is no sustainable alternative to supporting continuity of the constitutionally prescribed political process.
But does this automatically mean that we ought to settle for a farce in the name of democracy? Can the majority of a nation meaningfully distinguish between khaki saviours and civilian despots, both of whom unleash dogs of praetorianism upon them? If democratic rule doesnt translate into a system of governance ensuring municipal services to the ordinary citizen, why should he care about it? Will our unquestioning support for civilian autocracy strengthen or weaken democracy? Will we not be liable for complicity if we allow despots to proclaim territories of our country as well as political parties as personal fiefs and lord over them while masquerading as democrats? Will such politics of provincialism and tyranny not discredit the notion of self-governance and rule of law?
How will the ordinary citizen be empowered, his rights upheld and his interests served when political parties are treated as personal estates by their top leadership, sky-high barriers to entry within the political arena pre-empt the emergence of viable alternatives, and law and administrative machinery of the state is used to strengthen the hegemony of existing power brokers? And who will secure the rights of citizens to life and liberty, when patrons of parties already entrenched within a monopolistic political landscape unabashedly claim proprietary rights over territories they believe ought to fall within their dominion?
The mayhem in Karachi is yet another reminder of how our ruling political elites are primarily committed to adding more turf to their respective fiefs by acquiring greater control over state power and means of patronage, abusing power and exploiting public resources to nurture networks of personal patronage, and then using the states administrative machinery and patron-client networks to protect and defend personal fiefdoms. Karachi is in the throes of an ugly turf war between the MQM, the ANP and the PPP over the extent of exclusive and shared rights to own and exploit Karachi at will. And across Sindhs political spectrum the conduct of actors pointing fingers at one another is hardly distinguishable.
Let us start with the MQM. Here is a political party whose importance and strength emanates from its stranglehold over Karachi and its ability to unleash violence and bring the commercial hub of Pakistan to a grinding halt at will. That MQM chief Altaf Hussain continues to manoeuvre like a puppet this major political party with such significant representation in the Sindh and National Assemblies should be a case study in political science. Unless Altaf Bhai is a saint with unfathomable charisma, the reverence exhibited during his jocular telephone addresses and the complete absence of disagreement and dissent within his party ranks can only be understood in terms of fear.
Speaking to Karachi-wallas in private settings, youll hear umpteen stories of barbarism attributed to MQM goons and the familiar allegation that this is a fascist party whose sustenance lies in its ability and willingness to use violence and extortion as instruments of policy. But you will neither read about concrete allegations that can be brought before a court of law nor hear about them on any of the few dozen news channels. Anyone critical of the MQM and Altaf Bhai is unable to set foot in Karachi, as experienced by Imran Khan during the Musharaf regime. Criminal cases implicating the MQM do not go anywhere. Remember May 12, 2007, and the 45 innocent citizens who lost their lives as violence suddenly erupted across the city while the whole country watched in disbelief?
Continuing to mollycoddle the MQM is no prescription for Karachis malaise. But the joint PPP-ANP game plan of beating the MQM at its own game by raising competing militias and supporting them by appropriately tweaking Sindhs legal and administrative structures is the recipe of an even bigger disaster. It is claimed that the PPP-MQM alliance was unnatural from the word go. It was only a matter of time that the PPP would try and push the MQM back to its pre-Musharraf zone of influence in Karachi and Hyderabad, a move that the MQM would bitterly resist. And then there is the ANP, whose constituency and power within Karachi has grown manifold over the last decade without a proportionate enhancement of representation within government.
The unfortunate lesson that the PPP and the ANP seem to have learnt from the MQMs rise is to raise their own militant wings, arm them to the teeth and be ready and willing to fight pitched battles across the city in a bid to acquire and control more territory. To add fuel to fire, the PPP has also unleashed the hate-and-prejudice-spewing Zulfiqar Mirza upon Karachi: he not only stands accused of transforming the PPPs Aman (peace) Committees into instruments of violence but also represents the feudal mindset that perceives the title of badmash (goon) as a mark of honour. Keeping such a character at the helm could only mean that the PPP-ANP alliance in Sindh has decided to expand the terrain of their respective fiefs within Karachi by cutting the MQM down to size through use of force.
In this backdrop, the logic of introducing retrograde legal and administrative changes by reviving the commissionerate and discarding the Police Order, 2002, becomes obvious. All our political parties supported the 18th Amendment and wrote in Article 140A of the Constitution that each province shall devolve political, administrative and financial authority to the elected representatives of the local governments. Article 32 of the Constitution already mandates the state to encourage local government institutions composed of elected representatives of the areas concerned. Now, in utter disregard of these unambiguous provisions, provincial governments in Punjab, Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and Sindh have revived the commissionerate system that is based on the conviction that the citizen is unworthy of self-governance.
Be it disregard for an elected local-government system, scrapping a law conceived at transforming a colonial police structure into a citizen-friendly, service-oriented police, or abolishing the constitutional requirement to introduce democracy within political parties, the contempt exhibited by our political party heads for any instrument capable of empowering the ordinary citizen is all too obvious. And this, in turn, underscores the tragedy of democracy, constitutionalism and rule of law in Pakistan.
The only lasting solution to Karachis ailment is an agreement between all political parties to (i) deconstruct fiefdoms and the reign of terror that sustains them, (ii) de-weaponise and begin to function within the realm of law, and (iii) compete for political control on a level playing field on the basis of superior service delivery. Karachi as the commercial and industrial hub of Pakistan will keep attracting people from all over the country and its demography will continue to change. Unless the MQM, the ANP, the PPP (and even the Jamaat-e-Islami) realise that dividing this sprawling metropolis into fiefs and allocating control and ownership of territories and people on the basis of ethnicity will no longer work, this wretched city will continue to bleed.
Email: sattar@post.harvard.edu
