‘Electoral reforms imperative for weakening feudal hold’

Karachi
We have to bring about electoral reforms in Pakistan to weaken the hold of feudalism over the masses.
This was the suggestion rendered by Dr Ishrat Hussain, former governor of State Bank of Pakistan and currently the dean and director of the Institute of Business Administration, while speaking as the chief guest on the posthumous launch of the book, “Permanent Revolution: managing for deliverable democracy”, by the late management expert Syed Mumtaz Saeed at the Karachi Arts Council on Wednesday evening.
Delving further into the issue, Dr Hussain said electoral reforms would warrant a new census which in turn would motivate delimitation of constituencies, thus bringing many electorates under the urban umbrella.
This, he said, would rid many electorates of being coerced or cajoled by the feudal lords and would give them greater room for liberty of thought and action. Eventually, it will augur well for the masses who would taste the fruits of democracy under an urban — and urbane — system.
Dr Hussain, who also headed the National Commission on Government Reforms constituted by former president Pervez Musharraf, also had some very valuable suggestions for ushering in democracy into governance and the consequent amelioration of the lot of the deprived masses.
He called for reforms within the political parties and said that at present too much power was vested in the person of the party head who considered himself above accountability.
“This makes party leaders irresponsible and arrogant. They just don’t bother about their responsibilities towards the masses which are a negation of the principle of democracy at the grassroots level,” he said. “We must make sure that we have judicial reforms. Currently, access to justice is confined just to the mighty rich who can shell out pots of money to attorneys for this purpose.”
Dr Hussain quoted the example of none other than the author Mumtaz Saeed who had filed for a succession certificate in 1974 but the matter was finally settled in 2004.
He also called for the citizens’ constitutional and fundamental right to information and quoted a law in India where a citizen had the right to access the affairs of ministries and government. “This will ensure greater transparency,” he said. “No doubt we too have a freedom of information act but it has become absolutely irrelevant.”
As for parliamentary reforms, he said, the legislature should draft laws for benefit of the masses and not for a handful of the privileged. “To this end, the constitution of Public Accounts Committees is essential,” he said. “We have very poor and outdated management practices. There’s such an uneven concentration of power. Papers and files have to move between so many tiers of bureaucratic hierarchy. It is wasteful and time consuming.”
He was of the view that to improve the delivery of the basic rightful facilities to the masses, like water, gas, electricity, healthcare, the gap between the expectations of the masses and the delivery mechanisms of the bureaucracy had to be narrowed drastically.
“We have to evolve a legal and administrative framework that should devolve civic responsibilities to the district and local levels,” Dr Hussain said, while lamenting that civil service had completely lost its vitality and integrity.
Earlier, noted development expert, Haris Gazdar, fondly recalled his association with the late Mumtaz Saeed. He said democracy was an end in itself and not the means to an end. “The author rejects any excuses for the absence of democracy,” said Gazdar.
Shamim Ahmed a former high-ranking bureaucrat, who had flown in especially for the occasion from Islamabad, rated the late Mumtaz Saeed as a person imbued with a vast store of generosity and humility. “Mumtaz Saeed was totally free of the trappings of jealously,” he recalled.
Former Minister Safwanullah, who made a departure from the proceedings by speaking in very chaste Urdu, nostalgically recalled his boyhood and college days’ association with Saeed.
The programme was compared by the late author’s son, Kazim Saeed. Zafar Masud presented the vote of thanks and heaped praises on the late author.