Pakistan: Devil’s perfectionism

BY:Kahar ZalmayDaily Times


The media would never present reports of the army chief’s convoys and expenses of the GHQ and corps commanders or any story on how the military spends its budget or why its budget is not presented for public scrutiny

“The perfect is the enemy of the good” — Voltaire.

Pakistan is suffering from a self-destruction trend and refuses to listen to any advice that could help arrest this trend before things get out of hand. Why is it on the self-destruction path? Is there something wrong with the very structure of the state or the way it is governed? To understand the fuzzy subject of the Pakistani state, its society and governance structure, a philosophical operationalisation is required that I intend to carry out in the space below. On the basis of this philosophic account, I shall divide Pakistani society in four sections to make it easy for readers’ comprehension.

The first section is of ‘Pessimists’, or people who believe in philosophical pessimism. Their pessimistic position is that since Pakistan is engulfed by numerous problems ranging from poverty, joblessness, absence of the rule of law to religious-ethnic tensions and finally terrorism, it is impossible for anything to get better in Pakistan. That the common people will keep suffering and the rulers will keep ruling. Thus no change is in sight.

The second group is that of the ‘Optimists’, who believe that Pakistani society would eventually reach the state where calm reason would replace all violence and force and Pakistan would become one of the leading states in the world where the rule of law and democratic norms take root. We could see such indulgent emotional optimists writing in the newspapers and appearing on talk shows.

The third segment is that of the ‘Revolutionaries’, who believe that the current system of governance in Pakistan has lost its vitality and become redundant, thus destined to be replaced by a new social contract. The leading representative of this section is Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) chief Imran Khan who does not miss an opportunity to harp on about bringing a revolution in Pakistan.

The fourth section is philosophically ‘Devil’s Perfectionists’, who believe that the people should accept the existing social contract in the country and there is no need for any new order. Any improvement that is deemed required should be brought about by staying within the system, but the tricky part of this assertion is that if you accept this notion that we all have to work within the given system and strive for its perfection, we essentially accept the right of the military to rule this country and regard it as the guardian of the physical and ideological frontiers of Pakistan. The best example that would help to understand this group’s claim is that of General Zia’s referendum, which stated that if the people of Pakistan felt that the government was doing a good job of Islamising state and society, then the government would remain in power for an additional five years.

The current political structure in Pakistan is occupied by the devil’s perfectionists who all gathered to give legitimacy and power to the unlikely rulers, the military. The judiciary has been permissive and stood behind it whenever its services were required to sanction martial laws. The media is another instrument of the military and anybody who challenges the military’s right to rule this country or its dominance over the civilian setup, the argument or justification the media uses is that since all politicians are corrupt and incompetent, the military is forced to govern the country as a last resort. But the most lethal force that the military possesses is the terrorist groups who openly operate in Pakistan and can terrorise and silence any voice the military judges dangerous for its interests.

This section of society is so dominant that it easily silences the saner voices in Pakistan simply by labelling them anti-state. The two recent examples are the NRO case and the memo scandal. The swiftness and enthusiasm of the judiciary and the media is astounding to somehow find our former ambassador, Mr Husain Haqqani, guilty in the memo case and wrap up the current political dispensation through the NRO judgement, but when someone asks what happened to the Osama Commission report or investigation into the attack on Mehran base, an ominous silence prevails.

When Prime Minister Gilani on the floor of the House was forced to question the motives of the OBL Commission and asked who issued Osama bin Laden a visa, he was snubbed by the media and right-wing parties, labelling him irresponsible, and when he said that the military and the ISI chief did not comply with the rules of business in submitting their replies to the Supreme Court, one right-wing political party went to the extent of asking the prime minister to apologise to the army chief. Our superior judiciary swiftly takes notice of the recovery of a few bottles of alcohol from Atiqa Odho’s possession but turns blind when it is requested to take up the missing persons case or Asghar Khan’s petition lying with the court for around two decades.

Pakistani-born Canadian intellectual Tarek Fatah is right when he says: “What does it say about Pakistan where the chief justice of the country’s Supreme Court and the military chief has dedicated the country’s million-man army to provide security to a douche-bag? What does it say about a people who want to hang their former ambassador at the word of a man who does commentary on wrestling strippers?”

The media that has turned out to be a mouthpiece of the military does not tire of maligning politicians as corrupt and unsuited for the job. It publishes and broadcasts reports of the expenses of the Prime Minister House, the Presidency, expenses on parliament and parliamentarians and VIP protocols but would never present reports of the army chief’s convoys and expenses of the GHQ and corps commanders or any story on how the military spends its budget or why its budget is not presented for public scrutiny. Even people like Edhi say the politicians should be lashed in public for their incompetence. It illustrates how effective the propaganda of the devil’s perfectionists has been.

The religious parties, a crucial card in the military bag, are now gathered under the umbrella of Difa-i-Pakistan Council (Pakistan Defence Council) to expand the support base of the military. The leading member of the council and chief of the Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD) Hafiz Saeed recently said: “We will not let Pakistan slide into the hands of secular forces in Pakistan as they have no attachment or relation with Pakistan” and that “Pakistan is unmatched in terms of the freedom it allows for the pursuit of jihad and for spreading of Islam.”

Now what is the alternative to this negative or devil’s perfectionism? Author Tal Ben-Shahar suggests the adoption of optimalism. He says that optimalism allows for failure in pursuit of a goal, and expects that while the trend of activity will tend towards the positive it is not necessary to always succeed while striving to attain goals. This basis in reality prevents the optimalist from being overwhelmed in the face of failure. The optimalists accept failures and also learn from them, which encourages further pursuit of achievement.

There is no force to arrest this trend and that is the real tragedy of this country. This tragedy seems inbuilt in the structure of Pakistan but we should not be overwhelmed if some mistakes were made by the political class as democratic norms take time to get firmly established in any society. The more civil society strives to get our social institutions to democratise, the more we will be able to squeeze the role of the military and its support base, thus ceasing the decline of the Pakistani state.