1% > 99%

I feel Pakistan is less than 1/2% Republic. The rest of us are a colony of corrupt rulers found in different shapes. If we add all these corrupt “ashrafias” such as, corrupt politicians, corrupt bureaucrats, big landlords, Chaudhris, sardars, khans, waderas and a feudal-minded judiciary, along with junta, doctors, engineers, lawyers, industrialists, hidebound clerics, etc., the total will be less than a half percent of 22 crore. Now what to do? There are only two options left. One is to let it go like this till there is a civil war like Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Egypt and Pakistan becoming a failed state of the 4th world. As usual, ashrafias will carry on the loot and shift it to the 1st world, while the rest of us will remain a colony. The other option is a “Civilized War” waged against the feudal of all kinds by having a fair election as soon as possible, because time and patience are running short. One minor or major misunderstanding by the enemy may switch on the firework. After a fair and free election, a major overhauling of the system will be required, and it will be harsh and painful for the “colonizers.” Many will run away to the other part of the world to live on the booty they collected from Pakistan. Some will be dispatched to the next world for real justice. A true justice could be delivered in old Pakistan too.

Prolonged political instability has given us the accompanied economic inconsistency in setting our nation’s economic goals and plans. Each new occupant in Islamabad brings a new recipe for economic growth, and each new initiative brings results worse than the previous ones. The feudal structure and attitude plays a major role in the economic downslide. India, by the mid 1950’s, had done away with the jagirdari system, largely due to Vallabhbhai Patel’s intervention and interest. We, unfortunately even today, see major remnants of the feudal system and mindset in Pakistan, which has severely derailed and hampered our economic growth.

The 22 families were chargesheeted by the popular socialist leader Zulfikar Ali Bhutto who would call them ‘exploiters’ or ‘elitist exploiters.’ The aid and loans taken from multinational financial institutions over decades have now become our ‘opium’ for survival. While leaders of the neighbourhood have been developing economic vision and later revisiting it regularly, our country is focussed on celebrating or criticising the annual budget every June. In our country, the month of June is celebrated as the ’season of the budget’. The budget document is looked at as a scripture that would either give us manna and quails or lead us to an utter doomsday scenario. The pressure groups, inclusive of, trade associations, cartelised groups and even the various chambers of commerce and industry, voluntarily submit self-serving proposals. That these are accepted without a whimper is for reasons of dominance of the few over the many.

The presence of different classes in a society gives rise to the mushroom growth of elites. This is determined by either education from select schools, colleges and universities and also from pure power of wealth, both inherited and ill-gotten. They government institutions, inclusive of the bureaucracy and the powerful establishment, find commonality through various yardsticks to qualify themselves with the status of being the elite. In a society like this no democratic traditions can ever set in; the political parties at the expense of the exchequer compete in state generosity by plundering the national wealth. The Prime Minister of Singapore Lee Hsien Loong has rightly coined the term ‘auction of elections’. In a speech on the parliament floor he remarked that it takes countries several decades to shore and build up foreign exchange reserves and if the government were to be generous towards voters it would spend all it has and bankrupt the exchequer to please the voters through largely public sector development programmes ---- where only a lot is said and little is done. In the process, an incoming government finds it extremely difficult to cut back spending because it will bring in its wake a lot of confusion and social consequences. Even rich countries have faced such situations. President Musharraf’s government built up foreign exchange reserves up to $20 billion; the successive governments made it disappear. Today, we are facing default of sorts.

I pick upon Singapore as a case in point because the founder prime minister Lee Kuan Yew and successive prime ministers worked relentlessly to ensure that no elitism emerges in the tiny nation state. Continuing with Lee’s speech, he referred to the excellence of government competence and said it depends on the integrity and ability of individuals, who hold office of key services, like police, central bankers, managers of reserves, other law enforcers, etc. If one corrupt person gets into these key positions --- that’s the end. There is not only the end, it is end not only because they take away the money and help themselves, that you can stop, catch them and put them in jail ---- but this is not the end, because they subvert and corrupt the system to make it impossible to root out the cancer of corruption, which then becomes entrenched throughout the system and thus the system is permanently broken. Lee, further quotes that even the President of Indonesia used to publicly state and talk about what he called the ‘judicial mafia,’ not street mafia. The ‘judicial mafia,’ according to the Indonesian President, comprised those judges whom he could not trust for their integrity because they had become corrupt and had become a significant part of the problem.

In an elitist society, the law enforcers are usually in cahoots with crooks. People run away from seeking help from the law enforcers who, by virtue of being part of the elite, do not protect state assets but actually eat into it.

Elitism in any format has to be dismantled through strengthening and stabilising the system of governance. The cleansing must start from the top; any clean up from the bottom of the lowest strata of the society will be rendered meaningless if the top remains murky and muddy. As Pakistanis, we can have a hope to disassemble the current elitist society and listen to the Prime Minister of Singapore what he says and then fill with meritocracy our political arena, economic managers, establishment and judiciary - only then can we nurture and hope for a better future.