Futility of reinforcing failure

Columnist Col (Retd) TAHIR MASHHADI discusses why we should not waste money and resources propping up failure.

In spite of the bitter experiences of the three previous military regimes, our economically frustrated, insecure and brutalized masses, most desperate for change once again welcomed a takeover by the military perceiving it to be the panacea for all ills plaguing the nation. The regime set off with unprecedented public support. Unfortunately, they ignored the stark realities of existing improvishment, squalor, lawlessness, high prices, unemployment and lack of civic facilities that the previous regimes had left the people to rot in. The people at the helm of affairs manifested an unbelievable lack of foresight and understanding of even the most basic principles of politics and governance at all levels. They failed to comprehend and provide what the people really wanted. The essence of good governance lies in understanding and facing the challenge of meeting the peoples unfulfilled desires, demands, hopes, aspirations and high expectations on the one hand and balancing them with the resources pressures, constraints and problems that the government is confronted with on the other. The main flaw in the policies adopted is that instead of providing immediate short term relief a short limited term government (3 years maximum) went for long term goals (10 years minimum). A great number of needless fronts were opened simultaneously in every direction and just as quickly, suddenly and inexplicably closed and forgotten. No wonder they soon got stuck in the quagmire from which they are now finding it different to extricate. Fourteen months down the road the honeymoon long over and even the time for delivery elapsed. The regime must now snap out of the realm of fantasy, rhetoric and promise to that of reality and delivery. As all previous rulers learnt the hard way so must the present sets of rulers have realized by now that massive mandate and universal support vanishes very quickly.

Correct and balanced perception is perhaps the most difficult of all tasks. As perception is in the eyes of the beholder, reality invariably fades and gets lost in the maze of different perceptions. All rulers and governments (the present being no exception) have a greatly exaggerated perception of their success in governance. This is usually at great variance with the perception of the masses. The government’s perception that there is an improvement in governance, even tough by their own admission it is slow, unperceptiable and unpretentious at the present. The existing realities on the other hand point to be contrary. The prices of foodstuffs, medicines, consumer items, unemployment, suicides, rates of basic civic amenities and utilities like, water, gas, telephone and electricity, petroleum products, transport fares, taxes and duties and inflation has spiralled to highest in our history. We have seen the most massive exodus of capital estimated to be over three billion dollars and exodus of people (100,000) in the last one year. Law and order situation has shown no improvement. Poverty has doubled and more than one-third of our people live below the poverty line. Ever increasing rates for civic utilities, rising unemployment, burgeoning corruption and other day to day necessities has made the life of ordinary citizens intolerable. There has not been any substantial progress or improvement in the lot of the common man. Vast majority of the people are simply finding it most difficult to make both ends meet to keep body and soul together.

The economy has shown no visible improvement. Investment and the value of the rupee is lowest ever. The waste and extravagance in government expenditures continues unabated as no measure of economy or austerity is visible. Unable to cover our trade deficits or to service our debts we follow a moment to moment economic policy, which relies on getting breathing space from the IMF and WB, in shape of stand-by loans preventing debilitation and embarrassing defaults. The nation is at an abject mercy of foreign creditors to save it from being certified as insolvent. The economy functions only to service its loans and to meet the public sector payroll. It is only a matter of time that the governments will default on domestic debt servicing. Accountability has stalled. What little accountability that has been done is perceived by vast majority of the people to be selective and is  the cause of rampant cynicism. The regime has forfeited a great deal of public trust on this score. Whatever little confidence that was remaining has been shattered by the distasteful, surreptitious and intriguing episode of granting the bizarre pardon and exile to Nawaz Sharif and his family. This act had done irreparable harm and greatly eroded the military regimes moral authority and even raised serious questions about the justification for the military rule. By bulldozing a controversial, unpopular and unacceptable to the masses devolution plan, the regime has unnecessarily added to its string of woes and problems. The inherent deficiencies, inadequacies, contradictions and shortcoming doom the plan to failure. It is sure to be repealed and undone by any political party, coming to power. The regimes adventures such as Rs. 4 billion NADRA fiasco, the GST issue, tax surveys, the bara markets issue, the blasphemy law and weak kneed handling of the militant fundamentalists and other activities have resulted in a great deal of disillusionment, despair and disappointment amongst the masses.

One single factor which has let the regime down more than anything else has been the disorientation, indecisiveness, vacillation and a pronounced lack of competence and capability characterizing the selected team. It was generally expected that an outstanding and dynamic team would be selected to take the nation out of the deep malaise. For some unfathomable reason the nation was landed with a most uninspiring set of ministers and advisors lacking requisite know how; vision, capacity and quality of leadership. They certainly do not fit into the image of saints, reformers and liberal crusaders that the nation needed and the people expected. On the contrary most of them turned out to be mediocre unimaginative and inconspicuous. Not one has left his mark with any conspicuous achievement so far. Their collective mediocrity, incompetence, confusion and bad governance has slowly but surely turned even the staunchest supporters of the regime into disillusioned cynics. It did not take our myopically inclined bankable technocrats to be completely exposed and lose much of their lustre. The selected team (in many cases imported and for the most part well intentioned and honest) failed to break out of the shadows of the stereotype, egocentric, personalized and NGO oriented governance syndrome. The policy makers selected turned out to be highly elitist, aloof and unapproachable. These insulated self-styled experts aloof in their ivory towers having no idea or concept of existing realities even failed to take advantage of the realistic, impartial and highly relevant assessments, analysis, observations and suggestion made by well meaning and patriotic intelligentsia, journalists, columnists and social workers. This lapse caused grievous harm to the regime. In spite of being provided an almost perfect environment to work in the team miserably failed. Despite their sincerity of purpose and task oriented approach, they perhaps not by design but certainly by sheer incompetence and lack of insight let down their leader, the regime and the nation. The regime must cut its losses and in the national interest remove and replace them immediately. One quality of good leadership is never to reinforce failure. If a new team fails to deliver within six months remove it also. No one is ever indispensable.

The regime is pinning all hopes on revival of economy. It is true that there can be no development, peace and stability without economic progress: but equally economic progress is not possible and will never be sustainable if the government fails to protect the life, honour and property of its citizens and provide the masses with at least one square meal a day. There is no such thing as an economic miracle. Economic revival is a long, hard and torturous process. Pragmatic, political, social and liberal policies have to be adopted to overcome the harmful trends of the collapsing economic structure and its effect on all spheres of national activity. The nation is in danger of being subjected to anarchy of crime, sectarian, ethnic, tribal, cultural, political, social and civic violence, disturbance and upheavals. No amount of feeble steps at initiating of long-term political and economic reforms can possibly satisfy hungry stomachs. Only a handful of people know about or understand the mechanisms of the World Bank or the IMF. For 99.99% of the population; food to feed their children and provision of a measure of good law and order environment is the ultimate test and yardstick of measure and performance of good governance. While the rich, powerful and biggest defaulters, be they industrialist, landlords, civil servants and other elite owing billions to the government in form of taxes, excise duties, bank loans, electricity, gas, water and utilities bills remain untouched the low income, the meek and the humble are facing the wrath of the administration at the public dealing level. This has greatly alienated and caused hardship and anguish to the masses. This gives the impression that the traditional ruling elite and political governments are far better, more humane, understanding and people friendly than the military regime. The complexities and multi-dimensional problems facing the country and its people have to be faced and resolved within the limited time frame available. This is no time for self-righteous defence of self-prescribed missions derived from a naive view of politics and to keep reinforcing those aspects of governance which are unpopular or have been proven wrong. The crisis in the country has not materialized over night nor is it due to any fault of the present regime. It is a result of decades of economic, political and organizational mismanagement. It has been amply demonstrated that the regime cannot possibly complete all the tasks it has assigned to itself. The government in its remaining period should not attempt to do so. Rather it should concentrate on easing the people’s burden and providing relief and redress. Additionally it can initiate steps to eradicate the extreme cultural alienation, violent ethnic divide, dangerous sectarian strife and massive corruption which is imbedded in all walks of national life. Time has come to stop reinforcing failure. The government perforce must change its orientation; priorities and policies to suit the prevailing realities according to the peoples needs and desires. The people to whom the regime is pledged to serve will welcome and support it. The current situation is indeed desperate but not hopeless. Our people retain their immutable conviction and confidence in the nation. There is no morbid environment of despair, helplessness and despondency as far as the state is concerned. The belief, loyalty, love and faith in the nation is intact, resolute, unflinching and solid as a rock. The prevalent disappointment is with the regimes performance and that also because the masses had very high expectations from it. This can be remedied any time the regime in the greater national interest and in its own interest decides to do so.

A matter of greatest concern to all patriots from all shades of the political divide is that the existing political vacuum is not abdicated to fundamentalist and separatist nationalists who have been resoundly routed and rejected in every election in Pakistan’s history. Nawaz Sharif’s exit added to Benazir Bhutto, Altaf Hussain and some lesser nationalists/provincial leaders self-exiles has left an extremely large political vacuum. The religio-political parties may find the moment opportune to sneak into the vacant political space. Although they possess a great deal of firepower and destructive street power, the government will do well to remember that they have very little vote power or public support. The forces of disintegration are active. The fundamentalist supported by mysteriously well-funded ethno-religious groups are working at their destructive best. Some observers feel that the fundamentalist have been unnecessarily encouraged by the soft line, which the regime has shown towards them. This is why they have adopted such a militant and arrogant stance. Another peculiarity of our polity that has to be always borne in mind is that the bureaucratic traditional and ruling elite joins hands overtly and covertly with all the disillusioned, disgruntled and divisive forces; be they political, apolitical, religious, sectarian, ethnic and whatever to resist change and ensure the status quo. No one likes to relinquish power, prestige, privilege and income.

The biggest oversight and weakest link of the regime has been that it has not established any direct link with the public. In fact the people have been systematically alienated and purposely distanced from the government. The rulers and its functionaries govern with the best or worst of intentions and efficiency and the ruled with no direct link with the dispensers of governance continue to groan and suffer in abject misery and frustration. This has been the greatest missing link and reason for the poor and unresponsive governance. The administrative channel has no scope for non-official civilian input. The government must opt for participatory management rather than administration from above. There has to be more interaction between the rulers and the ruled. Government would do well to incorporate honest, dedicated and patriotic notables, intellectuals, social workers and proactive people from all walks of life at all levels of governance even at this late stage. The rulers must pay heed to and benefit from political advice from the civilian sector. Had they done so from the beginning they would not have made so many muddle headed decisions during the last fourteen months?

Two great things to the credit of the present regime is its policy of complete freedom of the press and that it has by and large rooted out government level institutionalized corruption. At least there is not a single charge being voiced till date. This is indeed something to be proud of and to build on. Hypocritical rhetoric, promises and antics have never succeeded in replacing reality. The regime must redirect its energies and programmes to pro-masses, poverty alleviating, relief and redress providing orientation. The masses of Pakistan are capable of and have shown great patience. They now demand delivery and action. The demand is for a government of performance rather than a government of task forces, focal groups, seminars, plans and promises. Credibility,  justification, acceptability of any military rule lies in its achievements, effectiveness, speed, precision and success. Success has the virtue of being its own justification. Failure has none. All hopes are focussed on Gen. Pervez Musharraf from whom the people have great expectations. He possesses the right credentials being a man of great integrity, character, honesty and honour as are his generals and other military colleagues. It is imperative for the very well being and existence of Pakistan that he succeeds. His sincerity, good intentions and desire to serve the nation come across and he personally still retains great deal of support. Unfortunately, the affairs of nations are not moulded by individuals but by the institutions. Today, the institution of the Armed Forces is the only cohesive force, the only glue that is keeping the federation together. The Armed Forces are our last hope. Gen Pervez Musharraf must become the first ruler (military or civilian) to make his exit honourably, with dignity and grace. This is the last chance. There is simply no room for the foul up. He must do this before the people’s remaining support turns into complete disillusionment, resentment, hostility and even hate as has been the case with all of our previous military and civilian rulers. Not one of them is lamented, missed or fondly remembered.