How PTI election manifesto embarrasses the party’s govt!

ISLAMABAD: “Police reforms have been neglected by successive governments to continue using the force as a political tool,” the PTI’s election manifesto reads in an embarrassing ridicule for the party’s government that has utterly failed to honour its promise of depoliticising and reforming the police.

Amid growing incidents of police brutalities and department’s further politicisation during the last one year, the PTI manifesto shows how badly the Tehreek-e-Insaf government failed to deliver what before coming into power has been its topmost promise.

The PTI in its manifesto had promised: “We will enforce depoliticisation of police by building upon KP’s successful police reform model, which will be replicated nationally. Police in Pakistan is ill-equipped, poorly trained, deeply politicised, and chronically corrupt. Police reforms have been neglected by successive governments to continue using the force as a political tool.” The PTI committed that in order to reform the police, it will:

“* Replicate the KP Police Act of 2017 across other provinces and appoint professional inspector generals to lead the depoliticisation of police similar to KP.

* Professionalise police hiring and career management, ensuring no political influence on policing in all matters from hiring, posting, and transferring of personnel.

* Replicate KP’s success in creating specialised training institutions. We will also invest in new policing systems and processes by tracking performance, equipping districts with modern surveillance/command and control centres.

* Make public outreach to police easier through new and enhanced policing apps, SMS systems, online FIRs and call centres.

* Establish Women police stations and desks at all levels to facilitate women empowerment. We will scale up the existing KP model of Alternate Dispute Resolution (ADR) Councils at tehsil levels, by rolling out the KP DRC model nationally to allow conflict resolution for small crimes right down at the tehsil level and police station level.”

Unfortunately, hardly any of the above commitment in regard to police reforms has been fulfilled by the PTI government either at the center or in any of the provinces that the PTI rules.

The recent incidents of death of Salahuddin in the Punjab police custody and the misbehavior of a policeman with an old lady are the latest shameful incidents of brutality and inhumanity triggering a renewed debate over the need of reforming and depoliticising the police.

Police reforms has been the top commitment of the ruling PTI before coming into power. During the initial few months, PTI government in Punjab had notified the setting up of a Police Reforms Commission under reputed Nasir Durrani, former IGP KP. However, within a few weeks’ time the Commission became defunct when Durrani decided to quit as Chairman of the commission because of premature transfer of the then IGP Punjab Muhammad Tahir.

Nasir Durrani was selected after the latter’s extra-ordinary performance in making the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) police depoliticised during his tenure as IGP KP under Pervez Khattak government.

Innumerable times, the PTI high-ups have been referring to the work done by Nasir Durrani in KP and had promised that the party after coming into power would depoliticise the Punjab Police and make it a modern force. However, after the departure of Nasir Durrani, the issue lost the focus and pushed to the back burner.