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Comments by Javed Chaudry on Manfi Quwat
Rubina Sahiba, in your recent column, Manfi Quwat (Negative
Forces); you have identified various problems in a society. You did not name the
society but it's not hard to guess that you are talking about God forsaken
country, Pakistan. The political, social and cultural problems that you have
listed are in fact, the effects of a cause, which is: the poor economy. The
economic problem by itself may be the mother of many ills, in fact, some thing
else is the cause of it, which is poor governance - right from the beginning.
The poor governance is indeed attributable to two characteristics
of the rulers that the country has seen one after the other during the last six
decades. The military rulers and the civilians, all had some thing in common at
varying degrees. They have all been thoroughly incompetent and corrupt. They
were all totally devoid of imagination, sensitivity and ignorant of histories of
the nations and how they develop. Their deep personal pockets always came in the
way of the national interests. Their own greed and need for corruption has
created a huge pyramid of organized
corruption system that starts from the president and prime minister including
the ministers and the senior bearcats and spirals through all ranks down to the
most lowly clerk in any government and semi-government organization or
institution. Even the judiciary has not been free of corruption. Not to mention
the police departments.
The feudal lords who have been running the country since 1948, after Mr. Jinnah
had passed away, are the least suitable lot to run a country. They do not know
the first thing about managing a country. The reality is that they do not even
have any interest in running the affairs of the country. The only art they are
good at is the art of loot and pillage without getting caught. The appalling
conditions will not change as long as the thieves and thugs will remain at the
helm. The way things are going, it does not look
like that any patriotic and sensible person will ever have a chance to get to
the top office to turn things around. The major political parties are a kind of
mafia organizations, only another mafia gang can take them head on. Nice
gentiles like Imran Khan have little chance to get to the top and overhaul the
system and introduce accountability at every level.
Do not feel bad about the partition of the subcontinent. Perhaps it is for the
better. If the country had not been split into three portions, the whole country
would have had a population of over 1.5 billion, poor, hungry and illiterate
people. The only advantage could be that they would not have had a natural enemy
in the region, but the social, cultural and economic problems may still be the
same, perhaps more complex. At any rate, the partition did take place and we
have to make the best of it - there is no
going back to pre-partition state.
The political leadership is very important to set the direction of the country.
The thugs who are running the country today are not political or national
leaders by any stretch of imagination. They are simply owners of business
entities, incorrectly called the 'political parties'. They have lots of stolen
money which they invest into the election campaigns and then recover the
investment through corruption. There is no accountability because there is no
concept of justice and fair play. Every one is corrupt,
who is going do whose accountability? It's a dog eat dog environment that is
taking the country to the dogs.
Javed I. Chaudry
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