There is a time when you feel frozen inside, unable to think or move. This is this time in the history of our country where everything has been put on an automatic regulator, giving an impression of movement. But this movement is bare of substance and soul, driven by pre-orchestrated compulsions.
The recent mass sentencing announced reflect the intellectual and moral bankruptcy whose public institutions, in particular the judiciary, seem to suffer. Instead of joining the established principles of case law, these convictions are motivated by the need to punish individuals only because they argue for a particular cause.
The recent judgments granted, on the basis of the evidence provided by two dependent witnesses who were ostensibly hid (one behind a sofa and the other under a table) in the room where a conspiracy would have been drawn up, are simply hilarious and would not be durable before a courtyard independent of justice.
However, these credible and independent courts of justice have become a Pipedream, moving away further over time while the government ministers promote what they call a hybrid system, where authority does not come from the law book, but from the interests of the beneficiaries who dictate how things should be done. In the process, justice still becomes the main victim.
These dispensations generally have a short life cycle, because personalized arrangements cannot replace an institutional approach refined over the centuries of work in the pursuit of excellence devoted to the benefit of states and people. Justice remains the main foundation on which the building of a progressive society is located and focused on well-being. Although incessant efforts are invested in improving the existing model, no one thinks of the falsification of the substance and the soul of the base on which the structure is based.
Instead of using the collective wisdom of people and learning past experiences, when individual fantasies become the dominant driver to shape the path to follow, he generally has boomerangs in the form of an avalanche, taking everything on his way. No distinction remains between good and evil, or useful and useless.
Everything is reduced to be part of a distraught mass, which, unable to resist the ferocity of the approaching dam, is carried away. We have suffered from this on several occasions, but we have refused to learn from this experiences. Instead, we insist to repeat our blunders.
From a sincere foundational attempt to establish democracy that repeatedly interrupted by toppling the incumbents, to martial law, to a system of basic democracy, to more martial laws with interludes of controlled and often rigged experience at the hustings To as the hybrid concoction – Our national life span is gravely punctured with potholes of experiments that have now Become gaping craters Ready to suck in Whatver Remains of the system that we follow.
In reality, nothing can be called system. It is simply a collective of applicants of interest who dictate the management that the country should take, so that their tanks of wealth and power continue to multiply. Having praised so far, we are now lost in a maze of imponderables where everything that remains of this manufacture is held hostage by the same group of the beneficiary elite which continues to insist so that they are right and that they will do it.
There is this persistent craze of practicing the same defective model in the hope that, this time, it will provide different results. Thanks to repeated experiences, this has not happened in the past, because it will not do so in the future either. In this pursuit, the institutional capacity and capacity of the state suffer to the point of becoming dysfunctional. Recent legal decisions are a manifestation of this serious institutional collapse.
We have lived in a world of pretension for a long time, to our total detriment. There is a moment in the life of a nation where people should gather their heads, remove make -up clothes and face reality in its brutal entireness. This is the need for current times. The abolition of punishment on fragile terrain divides an already split nation.
History has also established that peace cannot be obtained under the Glove of the sword. It will be secured by the exercise of reason, logic and compassion. He will be assured when people have the confidence that they are rightly treated in full compliance with the law of the country. Right now, we are far from this end and we are moving away later.
We are tired. If we continue to take the current road, we are heading towards exhaustion and despair. It is at this moment that the distinction between good and evil disappears completely and that one begins to operate without hiding consequences. We are not very far from this stage.
Drift towards current times may not have been difficult, but the recovery journey will be difficult. In this prosecution, we will be opposed to the beneficiary elite, which is responsible for the counting of this country to a skeleton and leaving it at the edge of a begging bowl in hand. It is a pitiful state which should evoke a collective response from all those who take care of their house, where they were born, and where they can still have a promising and profitable future. But that will not fall into their towers. They have trouble at hand.
An approach that fears revenge will cause an additional division. We cannot be grouped exclusively as angels or demons. We are human beings, fallible in our conduct. We must adopt a flexible approach, willing to examine without prejudice why we arrived at this stage and how we can extract ourselves from the rapid sand in which we are perched. There is no option, because we will continue to be sucked more deeply over time.
A claim to justice is the exclusive domain of a person. We can all be correct and we can all be wrong. His greatness is based in the acceptance of reality without any pretension clothes. We wore the combat mold for a long time. We have to put it away. A linear model is not always the best option. He must come with his nuances and colors so that he calls for a larger gathering of people.
Our delusional indulgences of the past have brought us to the edge of destruction. Truth and reconciliation can pave the way for a future that benefits everyone. It’s time to come together.
The writer is the Federal Minister of Planning, Development and Special Initiatives. He tweets / publishes @betterpakistan
The writer is a political and security strategist and the founder of the Regional Peace Institute. He is a former special assistant of former Prime Minister Imran Khan and directs the reflection group on PTI policy. He publishes @raoofhasan
Originally published in the news
