A new order

Pakistan's current structure of governance is breeding serious internal divisions along ethnic lines and, on the external front, is turning the country into a soft target for foreign interference. A new political system has to emerge that is inclusive, obsessed with business and the creation of wealth, less politicized, and favorable to creating fresh leaderships. The current turmoil provides a unique opportunity for bringing fundamental change. Under the right leadership, the confusion that Pakistan finds itself in can easily be turned into the birth pangs of a new order.

How flawed this system is can be gauged from the fact that there was no ethnic problem in Pakistan at Independence in 1947. Now, even minor administrative issues, such as renaming a province, water and resource sharing, and even movement of people within different parts of the country, carry the potential of ethnic conflict. The increased social interaction and intermarriages over the past six decades have given birth to a new generation that is more mixed and integrated than ever before but the system failed to turn this into an advantage. The greatest failure belongs not just to the military or the politicians but to Pakistani intellectuals, journalists and thinkers who failed to take the lead in whipping up Pakistani identity and nationalism.

The political class is the source of all rot in today's Pakistan. It's a tightly knit club for the privileged that fights creativity and change. Under this class, political parties – the supposed incubators for leadership – have become stagnant. This leadership crisis has gradually converted Pakistani political parties into little more than ethnic and linguistic outfits that threaten to turn Pakistani democracy into a vehicle for chaos.

In foreign policy, we have created a self-inflicted defeat in the past six years by ceding too much ground to the Americans, which has emboldened our enemies in the region and our detractors abroad. A constituency has emerged, especially on the US think-tank circuit, that audaciously talks about breaking up the Pakistani state.

What Pakistan immediately needs is less focus on politics and more concentration on creating opportunities for Pakistanis to generate wealth and spend it. The Chinese and the Dubai models are instructive in this context. The genie of ethnic conflict now rearing its head needs to be nipped in the bud by creating new provinces on administrative lines. And the problem of multiple power centers in Pakistani democracy needs to be resolved for good by giving Pakistanis the right to vote directly for their chief executive in a presidential system introduced on both the federal and provincial levels.

All of this will require a new constitution or changing the existing one. To be inclusive, the change needs to bring together all the functioning arms of the Pakistani state, including politicians and the military. Failures are so widespread that no one has the right to exclude any institution. And this change does not have to immediately conform to anyone's idea of democracy. Pakistan's survival requires a period of stability and economic-building where corrections can be introduced into the system before eventually exposing the country to the rigors of endless politics.

Power rivalries in our region are so ruthless that Pakistan cannot survive without radically restructuring itself to emerge as a strong, prosperous and confident nation. The alternative is to fall by the wayside and that does not suit a nation that has built an impressive record of beating the odds.



The writer works for Geo TV. Email: aq@ahmedquraishi.com