Pakistan; The Ongoing “Soft Revolution” towards a “Welfare State” – Part I

Guest Post by Silence

A welfare state is a government that provides for the welfare, or the well-being, of its citizens completely. Such a government is involved in citizens’ lives at every level. It provides for physical, material, and social needs rather than the people providing for their own.

The purpose of the welfare state is to create economic and social equality or to assure equitable standards of living for all, access to justice, freedom of faith, freedom of speech and transparency in decisions of executive.

The welfare state provides education, housing, sustenance, healthcare, pensions, unemployment insurance, sick leave or time off due to injury, supplemental income in some cases, and equal wages through price and wage controls.

It also provides for public transportation, childcare, social amenities such as public parks and libraries, as well as many other goods and services. Some of these items are paid for via government insurance programs while others are paid for by taxes.

All advanced societies view helping people who literally cannot help themselves as decent, humane, and necessary and this was the ideology of Jinnah’s struggle for an independent state as in colonial Sub-continent Hindu majority classifies the people on basis of color, breed and tribes, even of to today with 150 million untouchable’s living on sub-humane level however without division Hindu’s and Muslim would have been in a state of civil war forever.

Although there were colonial agendas behind this division and many issues were intentionally left unresolved, If we evaluate our history we find that feudalism had its roots in the Mughal period, these feudal who had complete control over peasants lives allied British occupation and were granted estates, government jobs and more powers in return for their loyalties. These feudal are still “honest” with their cause and join every dictator and switch political parties frequently and sellout their loyalties to any higher bidder.

The second beneficiary from colonial rule were the traitors of Tipu Sultan’s army who betrayed him and joined the British forces, in return they were rewarded accordingly and Muslim from these traitor groups were inducted in army, a notorious character in defeat of Tipu Sultan “Meer Jafar” was rewarded by inducting his grandson as first “Indian Commissioned officer” name Iskandar Mirza, who lead the Pakistan army afterwards and was the first to impose a military rule. This reflects the mindset and origin of our army.

The third group which supported colonialism were “Peer’s” and Mullahs, who exploited the religious emotions of Muslim, they not only strengthened British rule but actively killed and captured “freedom fighters” and got estates, lands and civil service jobs, the families include feudal of Sindh, Peers of Punjab and Mullahs who were against the creation of Pakistan. Their historical role has been of a “civilian wing” of colonial forces.

The alliance between the military, feudal, corrupt politicians, executive and the religious establishment has long had a stranglehold on power here, with each side using the other to advance its own aims and cement its own influence and judiciary provided legitimacy to all acts of that alliance by getting her share.

In 1954, just seven years after the creation of Pakistan, Governor General Ghulam Mohammad dissolved the first constitutional assembly and the government of Prime Minister Khawja Nazim Uddin. The president of the assembly, Moulvi Tamiz Uddin, challenged him in the Sindh High Court and won: the dissolution was held to be illegal and unconstitutional. On appeal to the Chief Court of Pakistan, which was later renamed the Supreme Court, Chief Justice Munir decided in favor of the governor general. The basis for his decision was the “doctrine of necessity”: meaning that to preserve the country the constitution had to be abandoned.

This judgment of Justice Munir established a long lasting partnership between Generals and Judges and inducted a fourth partner in exploitation of public along with Mullaha’s and feudal.

This alliance was further strengthen by international forces which wanted to punish ZA Bhutto on one hand for his efforts to acquire nuclear weapons and on other hand to strengthen these four forces for a proxy war against Soviet Union, but in this process a fifth invisible force was established consisting of drug lords, arms traders and recruiters for jihad who got black money in this process and initiated a new trend of “money politics”, even some generals were directly involved in this trade.

The United State having complete control over these five influential ruling “Mafia” of Pakistan once again pushed the country in to war against its own created Talban’s and appointed a former City Bank employee to channel funds for this war, he also got a free hand to gift Pakistan’s public institutions for personal gains under umbrella of “privatization”.

At the same time we have seen “Judicial Activism” around the world, be it India or United States, Chief Justice of Pakistan Iftakhar Chaudhary, influenced by judicial activism became a hurdle in sale of “Pakistan Steel Mills” and it hurt the interests of Shaukat Aziz (US governor for Pakistan), also issue of “missing persons” and Musharaf’s uniform were clear “violation of collation of interest” of ruling Mafia.

It was a violation of rules of business of Judges, Generals, Mullahs, Fudals and Drug Lords ruling Mafia. The powerful General Musharaf backed by USA called Chief Justice, make him realize of his position and told him to submit resignation.

The refusal of Chief Justice to resign proved a fatal crack in ruling Mafia and it broke the sixty years old alliance of exploitation.

We, the nation, entered in to a new phase of our history that day.

Unless this system is destroyed the ideas prevailing in Pakistan concerning way of life, society and politics cannot change.

Contnued…………..