A decaying society
A society becomes barren without setting ideals and goals. A country declines without following its morals and laws. Unfortunately, Pakistan is a country where morality, laws, and ideals have lost their meaning.
The country is being ruled by a powerful, corrupt, and immoral elite that has formed its own distorted morality and draconian laws to protect their rule. All these laws and political, economic, educational, religious, social, and administrative systems are used to serve the corrupt ruling elite. The ruling elite has been shamelessly plundering the resources of the country since 1947. A person who raises his voice against these cruelties is put behind bars, silenced through torture, or killed without any fear of punishment.
Since 1947, the poor people have been programmed to tolerate and wait for a leader to emancipate them. The leader will never come, and the people are bound to suffer till they themselves try to break this status quo.
Heidi Priebe, a famous Canadian writer, asserts: “If there’s one thing we all need to stop doing, it’s waiting around for someone else to show up and change our lives. Just be the person you’ve been waiting for. Live your life as if you are the love of it. Because that’s the only thing you know for sure- that through every triumph, every failure, every fear and every gain that you will ever experience until the day you die, you are going to be present. You are going to be the person who shows up to accept your rewards. You are going to be the person who holds your own hand when you’re broken. You are going to be the person who gets yourself up off the floor every time you get knocked down and if those things are not love-of-your-life qualities, I don’t know what are.”
In the well-known “Waiting for Godot” play, Vladimir and Estragon, the main characters, honour their vow to wait for Godot, reflecting how people often hold to purpose and optimism in the face of hardship. The characters in the play exhibit a constant sense of hopelessness and despair due to their perpetual state of waiting for an unfulfilled expectation. A child enters the stage during the play’s last seconds, informing Vladimir and Estragon that Godot will more likely appear the following day rather than today. The play closes with the characters continuing waiting in spite of this revelation.
The people of Pakistan are just like the characters in Waiting for Godot. The people have been waiting for freedom, prosperity, and rights for the past 76 years, which they will never get under this prevailing cruel and immoral ruling elite and system. The people are forced to live painful, hard, unclean and confusing lives under the hope to wait for better days and brighter future. They hope even if they are aware that these pleasures will never enter their lives till the time they remain waiting for them in Pakistan. The corrupt ruling elite own all wealth, freedom, and rights and it would never allow the poor people to share.
The corrupt ruling elite is using many tactics, including religion, provincialism, nationalism, extremism, democracy, and feudalism, to hold power over the people. The people have never been allowed to understand the real causes of the fall of East Pakistan, the Abbottabad operation, rising extremism, illiteracy, and political and economic instability. The Hamood Ur Rehman Commission Report and the Abbottabad Commission Report have never been published in Pakistan. Now, the Faizabad sit-in inquiry report has been leaked. The report has failed to reach any conclusion by fixing any responsibility on any institution of the state. Even the report has not addressed the Supreme Court’s directions, which casts doubt on the impartiality of the investigation. The leaked report has also ignored the fact that state institutions should refrain from using religion for political purposes. It is an open secret that the TLP was formed and supported to gain partisan interests. The sit-in commission report has exonerated everyone involved in the 2017 sit-in, endorsing the fact that the ruling elite is more powerful than the law of the country.
It is also very tragic that the ruling elite, including politicians, businessmen and religious leaders, use the slogan of the rule of law for committing their immoral and corrupt acts.
The Ministry of Interior has defended its ban on the social media platform X/Twitter by claiming that the ban “upheld the rule of law and principles of democratic governance”. The government officials declare that secret trials of civilians allegedly involved in the May 9 riots are necessary for establishing “the rule of law” in the country. Nawaz Sharif’s lifetime disqualification from contesting elections after a determination by the Supreme Court was hailed as a victory for ‘the rule of law’. Now, his acquittal from all the cases, is considered as the victory of the rule of law.
Reema Omer has described this situation very aptly, “As these illustrations show, like in other authoritarian states, the rule of law has been distorted to mean ‘rule by law’ in Pakistan. It is used to justify the arbitrary implementation of bad laws without adequate safeguards for the protection of fundamental rights or meeting due process requirements. The authoritarian reconfiguration of the rule of law as ‘rule by law’ appropriates the language and rhetoric associated with the emancipatory, liberal idea of this concept to consolidate state power, undermine democratic values, victimise political opponents, and impede the fundamental rights of citizens. Unlike the rule of law, ‘rule by law’ is almost always associated with the use of law as an instrument to serve the ends of those in power. It allows the state to use law to control its citizens, but never allows law to be used by the citizens to hold the state accountable”.
The poor and helpless people should try their best to break these chains if they want to lead a prosperous, democratic and peaceful life in Pakistan.