Search for stability

It is a logical assumption that any officeholder who comes to power, especially in a difficult situation, will require months or years to bring about any meaningful change. The change of six IGs of police in Punjab does not in this respect build any kind of confidence among people. Within a three-year period, the seventh IG, Sardar Ali Khan, has now been appointed after being taken out of the Safe Cities Project. Six men have served on the IGP police post before him and lasted an average around six months. There have also been four chief secretaries of the Punjab province, with the fifth now appointed after CM Usman Buzdar got the consent of the prime minister to make the changes. Ironically enough, the prime minister has come on record to praise previous IGs, only to see them removed a few months after his words.

The complicated business of changing attitudes within the police force and going after crime on the scale that has occurred in Punjab can only take place if one chief of the police is allowed to build a team and then work out a strategy that can alter matters in a province where major cases have indeed been reported and where there is still apprehension among people that things are not being efficiently run. A survey shows that 50 percent of the people in Punjab are not happy with administration of the province, compared to over 60 percent of people in favour of the PTI in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and over 70 percent in Balochistan. This suggests there is something amiss in Punjab.

Beyond this, it is quite obvious that if the chief of police has to be changed, time and time again, often given barely a few months in office, there is either something wrong with the choices being made, or the way governance is being conducted. We clearly need stability more than anything else. Law and order is a facet of life which affects all people and a more efficient police system could protect many from the kind of crime we have seen again and again. It is unclear what the change of the IGP is now expected to achieve. We have also seen similar changes in other posts in government at both the centre and the Punjab province in particular. Without a stable, consistent, setup which can deliver on the promises of the PTI, there can be no hope that the government will deliver what the people had hoped for.