THERE are speeches that we forget the moment they end. And then there is a moment when a man in power suddenly becomes voice of common man. When I saw the Interior Minister cry while speaking about the failure of the system, I did not see a minister. I saw a Pakistani who is tired, just like us. His tears were not drama. Anyone who has sat in an important chair knows that you see files that the common man never sees. You see how deep the rot is. Perhaps that is what made him cry.
The system has failed. We all know it. Go to any office, police station, hospital or court and you will see it. Justice takes years and by the time it comes, the man who sought it may be no more. Institutions are fighting with each other, but no one is fighting for the citizen. Clean water, safe food and education have become matters of luck, not rights. So when a minister says the system has failed, he is not telling us anything new. He is confirming what we suffer every day. But we must be honest with ourselves: the system is not some machine from outside. We are the system and we have failed even more badly.
Just look at what we do to each other. We mix poison in the milk that we sell to our own neighbours’ children. We sell fake medicines. We keep expired food in shops and sell it with new packing. We weigh less and charge more. We complain about big corruption on television but we are ready to give a small bribe to get our own work done quickly. We call it chai pani so that it does not sound like a sin. And how we treat our women in markets and buses and offices, that alone should make us bow our heads in shame. We litter our streets and then abuse the government for dirty roads. How can a clean system come out of a society that has accepted dishonesty as cleverness.
That is why today the common man is crying for an iron hand. Not an iron hand to beat the people. An iron hand to support the people. People want a state that catches the big fish. People want a law that is one for everyone. Rich or poor, powerful or weak, the law should be the same. Right now the law is only for those who have no approach. That has to end. And this brings me to the hardest truth. Can any normal democratic government do this cleaning. I think not. And this is not about any one political party. Every party is the same in this matter.
A democratic government in Pakistan today comes with hundreds of MNAs and MPAs and behind each are relatives, friends and financiers. These people are the system. When you act against the sugar, flour or land mafia, you find the mafia man is a friend of your own MNA. When you want to post an honest police officer, you get a hundred phone calls demanding a corrupt but loyal one. So even if the Interior Minister is completely honest, his own political team may not let him act. His hands are tied by his own people. We have reached a stage where routine politics cannot fix our economic and moral decline. A painkiller will not cure cancer. You need an operation.
That operation is a government of technocrats. Not martial law, not dictatorship, but a government of honest experts who do not have to win the next election. A technocrat does not need to make his brother a chairman. He does not need to give contracts to his voters. He can say no. And Pakistan today desperately needs a government that can say no. Our problems are now expert problems. The economy needs real economists, not speakers. Policing needs real police experts, education needs real teachers. A professional fears his own reputation. He will think ten times before doing something wrong.
Only a government that is free from the pressure of MNAs and MPAs can use the iron hand in favour of the common man. It can close the factories that make poison. It can pull down illegal buildings without seeing who is the owner. It can remove corrupt officers without fearing that the government will fall. If we keep bringing the same faces again and again and expect that the system will get better, we are only fooling ourselves. The tears of the Interior Minister are a warning for all of us. Today one man in power has cried. Tomorrow the whole nation will cry if we do not wake up. We do not need another routine election. We need a period of honest, neutral and expert accountability to clean both the system and ourselves.
—The writer is former Regional Executive Inclusive Development at NBP, Mirpur AK.
