Valentine

St. Valentine’s Day’s celebrations in Pakistan marked the beginning of a new reality in the politics of Pakistan. The politics of Pakistan have traditionally followed a scripted and a predictable course without any significant deviation. Pakistani politics have always maintained their perennial hues of a representative monopoly, with the result that the majority of the population is politically disenfranchised and has no effective role in the affairs of the nation. The political parties in Pakistan usually ascribe to the politics of agitation and confrontational rhetoric, whose primary incentive is to personalize the issues and deny the public space, where a meaningful discussion can take place. In a sense, the political debate in Pakistan is still immature and most politicians do not seem to realize that the political landscape in Pakistan has changed. The politics, which is practiced in Pakistan, has no bearing to the reality that exists in Pakistan and thus, the political debate in Pakistan is limited to a few personal arguments of the political parties in opposition and the government in power.

The vast majority of the Pakistani citizens have no voice in this unfolding political debate within Pakistan, because the issues involved do not concern them. The evolving nature of this continued lack of a political participation is creating a sense of alienation within Pakistan between the people; their government and the political opposition, which claims to represent the people of Pakistan. The failure of the political debate in Pakistan has been a failure to realize and acknowledge the expectation, which the people of Pakistan hold towards their political leadership. Another caveat to this failure, which has been ignored by the politicians, is the changed demographic of the Pakistani population, where the young people make up the majority. This youth of Pakistan is not only denied political representation, but are also economically powerless. In a global economy, which is fast reaping the benefits of an information age, the youth of Pakistan are progressively witnessing their future slip from their grasp.

This level of increasing frustration is marked by a sense of hopelessness, because Pakistan, as a state, is not fulfilling its obligations to prepare its young people to meet the challenges of the future. The system of education in Pakistan, which could have provided its young people with the wherewithal of an economically viable knowledge, has ceased to exist and education in Pakistan is no longer a pathway to a better life for the overwhelming number of Pakistanis. The educational instruction in Pakistan has been, since the 1970s, a victim to the policies of political asphyxiation and the ideals of political euthanasia. Pakistani educational system, in a large measure, as it is presently fabricated is designed to promote the rationalism of the state’s reason by seeking an obedient response from its students and it is not interested in educating the young men and women of Pakistan with critical thinking and rationalizing skills.

The end result of this is that Pakistani educational institutions are producing students, who have no economically viable educational skills and thus, are finding it very hard to get jobs in an information economy. Consequently, these graduates are not able to secure jobs of their expectations and with this failure to get meaningful employment; they are being socially, economically and politically being forced onto the margins of the society. This growing sense of alienation, which the young people of Pakistan are confronting on a daily basis, is nurturing a perception of an increasingly latent resentment against the state, which is held as being ultimately responsible for the gap that exists between the expectations and the limitations faced by the young people in Pakistan. Another facet, which seems to be aggravating this problem, is that Pakistani economy is still based on an agrarian industry, but the majority of its educated unemployed youth lives in its urban centers and requires potential jobs in either the manufacturing or the service industries, which are still in an infantile stage of growth. Thus, the available supply of jobs in Pakistan is not enough to meet the demographic demand, which increases each year as more and more people enter the job market.

It was this sense of frustration and a seething anger, which expressed itself violently during the riots in many cities of Pakistan on St. Valentine’s Day. The mobs of young men, who went on an organized rampage in Lahore and in the process, defaced one of its most historical and beautiful street, the Mall, were venting an opinion which suggested the days of usual politics was over in Pakistan. The events of St. Valentine’s Day were infused with a terrible portent for the government of Pakistan and the political opposition in Pakistan, because the acts of destruction seemed to intone that such scenes were not an aberration, but the norm of future political protests. One of the implications, quite pregnant, in the demonstrations, was the complete collapse of the social contract, between the governed and the governors and the manner in which government property was willingly and systematically destroyed implied that an overwhelming number of Pakistan’s youthful population is not willing to accept the writ of the state’s authority over their lives.

To the protestors, who were gleefully committing acts of arson and loot, the state’s writ was synonymous with an oppressive and uncaring diktat, which had to be confronted and opposed and thus, forced to empathize with the public opinion in Pakistan. The refusal to accept the legitimacy of the state should not be construed as a harbinger of a revolution in Pakistan, because despite the volcanic eruptions of rage in Pakistani cities, Pakistan is not on the cusp of a revolution. Revolutionary movements, historically speaking, are a systematic attempt to overthrow the state and generally require a leadership that has historically been provided by the middle class, which wants to replace the inequitable nature in which the state distributes political and economic benefits to its citizenry. Therefore, the possibility of a revolution occurring in Pakistan is a remote but still a negligible concern, because the middle class of Pakistan is a status quo class and is quite content with its political and economic status in society. Furthermore, the political leadership, which might formulate a revolutionary voice in Pakistan, is not interested in overthrowing a system of status quo politics, which seems to be beneficial to their own interests.

Consequently, the youth of Pakistan who went on a destructive spree are not capable of providing a leader, who can articulate their rage into a political demand, because their alienation with politics has made them, generally speaking, distrustful of political leaders. The overt distrust of political leadership and its ability to solve the most pressing problems of the day stems from a litany of broken promises and unrealized commitments historically made by the politicians of all hues and tints in the last six decades of Pakistan’s existence. Hence, the failure of this politically, socially and economic group of marginalized members of Pakistani society to form a cadre of political leadership suggests that, if the government does not undertake pressing steps to rectify their grievances and the opposition learns to correctly identify their concerns, this form of demonstrations will become a common feature of politics in Pakistan. The failure of this group to form an effective leadership might exclude the possibility of a potential revolution, but the inability to do so also implies the devolution of Pakistani politics into a state of anarchy.

In a political sense, the existence of a state of anarchy is more harmful and dangerous to the political viability of the state than a revolution, because whereas the revolution is simply the replacement of one form of a state’s legitimate status quo with another; a state of anarchy is the vocalization of a complete refusal to accept the political legitimacy of the state. The complete collapse of the state’s writ, during the demonstrations, was also indicative of the fact that the present system of seeking devolution of political power to the grassroots has not been entirely successful. Politically, Pakistan is in a state of transition from the old system of management, which was the legacy of the British to one created under the stewardship of the present government and the separation of the powers from the bureaucracy to the elected representatives of the people is still opaque. Therefore, in a legal sense, the writ of the state is still ambiguous and vaguely defined and thus, the authority of the state, which is needed to react to a potential crisis, was shown by the outbreak of the riots to be confused and contradictory to its own interests.

Under the old colonial system of administration, the police was supposed to be under the authority of the District Commissioner (DC), who had the power to authorize the use of police force to quell a demonstration gone awry. Once the District Commissioner had consented to the use of force, the Superintendent of Police (SP) could order the police to break up the demonstration. During any potential riot or demonstration, both the DC and the SP had to be present on the spot and in case the DC was not available, the order to use force could be given by a Magistrate. Thus, there was a clear chain of authority, which could be implemented to enforce the writ of the state, but under the new government ordinances, the power to authorize the use of police force was given to newly created office of Nazims and Naib-Nazims and this power was also given to the police. It was due to this reason, of over lapping jurisdictions, which paralyzed the state’s response to the violence and to make matters worse; none of the Nazims or Naib-Nazims was present on the spot and thus, the police was never given timely orders to end the violence.

The failure of the government to react in a well coordinated manner to protect public and private property and maintain law and order was also a sign of concern. The total collapse of civilian power, during the riots, suggested that the government itself is fractured over its own powers and thus, does not have the political coherence needed to deal with any challenges to its writ. This development is more worrisome; because it raises the troubling question of how will the government react to situations of future potential anarchy in Pakistani cities, when its response is itself a victim to its own political machinations and political power rivalries.

The disturbing realization from the inability of the government to effectively stop the violence from assuming a destructive nature was that unless it irons out the wrinkles in its own procedures and laws, it will not be in a position to deal with any such situation in the future. This an issue of concern, because scenes of anarchy, as seen in Pakistan, will continue until the politically and economically disenfranchised people of Pakistan start to believe that the politics of the nation reflects their needs and concerns. The only feasible manner, in which this issue can be addressed, is for the political debate in the nation to change from one of merely providing lip service to the cause of its citizens and to one that actually places their welfare before all other political issues, which currently dominate Pakistani politics.

The unstated misfortune, which seems to be fermenting, is the failure of the political thought to adapt itself to the changed political environment in Pakistan. The same old discredited arguments and explanations and polemics of shifting responsibilities suggest that the political process in Pakistan suffers from a perpetual inability of an introspective ability, which like a cancer continues to gnaw at the body politic of the nation. Another twist to this concern is the loss of political legitimacy, which is the result of the popular perception of a lack of political articulation on the serious problems facing the nation and its besieged citizenry.

The sad sum of this emerging reality is that politics, in Pakistan, stand discredited and the vast majority of Pakistani population does not seem to harbor any sentiment of a political identification, with the electoral or procedural politics in Pakistan. The social contract, which had always been historically frayed and tattered in Pakistan, seems to have dissolved completely and in the political vacuum created as a result; political nihilism masquerading as an anarchy appears to be have filled the void. This development is, itself, marked by the disappearance of an environment for a public debate, because the ever increasing levels of anarchic politics in Pakistan, unless arrested, will eventually marginalize the mainstream political debate and render it ineffective as a solution to the nation’s problems.