With an economy that’s lost its luster, large-scale youth unemployment, a collapse of political rights, and thugs from Zardari and Nawaz Sharif party practicing the an organized torture of helpless people in their dealings with fellow-citizens, Pakistan has become a land of civic and moral decline. Slowly but surely, people have grown more and more disoriented, increasingly more detached from the meaningless happenings around the political scenario, something sad and awful surfacing in their eyes. They are now losing control. Something terrible was going to happen. Eventually something terrible should happen.
Particularly when a ruling regime has been in power for many years, states tend to overspend more when the economy is facing a crisis or a downturn. The incumbent rulers start scrambling to protect themselves and use the levers of the state to promote their own popularity by attempting to generate growth at any cost. They spend heavily on make-work projects, or they order state companies to create jobs or to keep prices artificially low, in an attempt to protect their citizens from the pain of the downturn. This creeping inclination to spend heavily in hard times was very visible during Nawaz and Zardari reign.
As I discovered, there were reams and reams of it. The criminal government ministers and officials speaking out endless snarls of words, sometimes twisting into meaning, sometimes into nothing at all,frequently breaking apart, always branching off into other pieces I’d come across later.
Dirty politics can range from invasive investigations into an opponent’s personal life to complete IRS audits ordered by an incumbent president. President Richard Nixon is said to have maintained an entire staff of experts in this type of political maneuvering, including Donald Segretti and a young Republican named Karl Rove. Political enemies of the president were routinely audited for years, even television hosts such as Dick Cavett. Cavett had criticized one of Nixon’s policies on-air, in front of a guest who Cavett correctly assumed worked for the Nixon White House.
Dirty politics can occur at any level of public service. Local political candidates often use financial records to embarrass an opponent. Family members and known political associates may also become fair game. A candidate’s mental stability may be challenged, especially if he or she offers up an emotional or overheated response to political tactics. A negative ad campaign is not always the same as questionable politics, provided the charges in those ads are true and confirmable. Dirty politics often occur away from the scrutiny of the press, so many examples rarely come to light until years after the campaigns have ended
In Pakistan, major problems were associated with the excessive role played by state banks. Politicians there have long been known to call up managers at banks to direct them to extend loans to their donors and cronies. Some of the largest banks have frequent turnover in the chairman’s position, as one political appointee replaces another, and every new chairman can be relied on to announce that under his predecessor the bank had been hiding bad loans. So the bad loan totals would suddenly spike, and then the new chairman would report steady progress in correcting his predecessor’s mistakes—until he too was ousted in favor of some other political favorite, who revealed a hidden stash of bad loans
The constitutional standard is clear. Pakistan’s armed forces owe their loyalty to the Constitution of Pakistan that is symbolised in the President, who is the Commander-in-Chief. This emblematic relationship of the military with the State sits alongside symbolic separation from the government. The President is the custodian of the constitutional values of Pakistan. The government and its executive arms are its trustees. The system is so designed that as long as the orders have presidential assent, the military cannot question it.
